


Never Get You Right

by Killtheselights, TheLadyoftheHouse



Series: The Desired Effect [2]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: 50 Shades of Grey ruins everything, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Cats being cats, Chuck E. Cheese's, Domestic, F/M, Fluff and Smut, Las Vegas, Male Escort, Mitaka Gets a Dance, Mixed Martial Arts, Rey is a Good Girl with Weird Friends, Rey is a Shitty Tipper, Smut, Strippers & Strip Clubs, male stripper, mentions of abandonment, stripper!Ben, tw: child neglect
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-09
Updated: 2018-12-10
Packaged: 2019-08-21 05:51:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 32,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16570859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Killtheselights/pseuds/Killtheselights, https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLadyoftheHouse/pseuds/TheLadyoftheHouse
Summary: They'll turn you into something whether you are it or notBut they'll never get you rightI've been watching you all nightAnd the people passing by they should tremble at your sightIt was supposed to be a one-time trip to the strip club for Rey to celebrate her birthday.Then why can't she resist coming the next night?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Coming in hot with Track 8 of The Desired Effect.

Rey doesn’t really remember exactly how she had ended up so close to a strange man’s black leather g-string last night, but what she does remember is the emptiness in his dark, dark eyes as he looked up at her from between her knees moments later.    
  
She had been in the middle of the first (and likely only) lap dance of her life, her friends howling from the audience while the giant hunk of leather-clad, muscle-bound man-meat named Kylo Ren (no way in hell that was his real name) stripped and gyrated before her. Not that she hadn’t thoroughly enjoyed the show. She had; a fact which she had repeated to Rose throughout the rest of the evening. But as she had been lifted down off the stage by two enormous and beautifully warm hands around her waist, her face must have had a peculiar expression, and not one of blushing arousal, because Rose and Kaydel and Jess immediately pounced on her with concern. Rey had insisted breathlessly that everything was fine.

When she had turned to look back at the stage and her raven-haired seducer, who had long since disappeared in a cloud of singles and sighs and taken his sad eyes with him, she couldn’t help but wonder if everything really was. 

Which is why she finds herself sitting alone in a booth back at the Starkiller Strip Club the very next night, nursing a watery vodka cranberry and awaiting the appearance of Kylo Ren on the glittering stage.

 

Generally, Kylo could spot the trouble women as soon as he strolled onstage.

He knew the type that would give him a headache the moment his routine ended. He could spot them from a mile away: the hungry moms. The horny bachelorettes. They’d follow him around the rest of the night. They’d paw at him past the point of familiarity. They’d beg him for things he couldn’t offer at the club. 

And the worst would come back.

He hadn’t pegged her as one of the bad ones, but when the twangy opening bars of his number that he practically had tattooed into his gray matter for the past few months started to roll and he had strolled out to begin his Bad Biker routine, he had spotted her.

It was hard not to.

The Sunday night shift is garbage. Everyone knows it. Fewer customers, fewer hours. The manager knows he fucking hates it but when Kylo had walked off the stage the previous night, pulling the tips out from under his thin waistband and in between unmentionables, Armie had approached him to inform him that someone there was a vacancy on the roster, and sorry, man, this one is on you. He had just been thinking with the way they had moved him back later in the show they were starting to recognize his value here, give him some more authority, more prime time slots, maybe more respect. He never meant for it to be a career, but it had been a year this week. He was taking more and more shifts, sometimes willingly.

He had to get out, and he would in time, but for now the money was too good. Usually.

Tonight the money was not going to be good, and to make matters worse, he could spot last night’s birthday girl the minute he pivoted to face the audience.

Hard to forget a face like that: one that goes from joy to shock and horror when your head is buried between her thighs. Really, a great feeling.

He knows if he stares at her too long, he’ll make eye contact and never make it through the number.    
  
Snapping his eyes away from her, he summons a fake, flirtatious smirk, and casts his gaze over the small audience, his eyes flicking to anywhere that he could let his mind wander.

Back to his happy place. He takes off the biker hat, tossing it aside, and shakes out his hair, running a hand through it. Most male strippers have short hair; it’s just the look women crave, Armie had explained. But despite the advice of several of the more experienced guys at the club, Kylo had kept it long. It was all part of his look, part of his acts, and eventually they had learned that if it works, hey, don’t mess with a good thing.

There is a group of tourists close to the stage hooting and hollering, eager for the experience, even this far off the main Vegas strip. They seem older. Rather drunk. Eager to paw at him.

Happy place.

He wonders about the stray kitten that had made itself at home outside of his apartment. If he spots it tonight, he’ll take it in. He bought a few spare cans of tuna last time he went shopping. He had some money; he could take her to the vet’s, check to see if she had a microchip or anything. Get her shots. Adopt her officially. It was an unrealistic goal, but maybe a cute little companion would do him some good. His apartment was getting a little...

Happy place.

He slides his vest off his shoulders, slowly rolling it down his arms as he sways his hips to the beat.

_ Happy place . _

  
  


He had seen her. She feels hot embarrassment flush her cheeks and pushes her sweating glass against her face to cool it, shutting her eyes against the red lights. 

_ God, you’re such a desperate little psycho, Rey,  _ she thinks morosely to herself.

What the hell was she even doing here? So she had gotten drunk the night before and gotten one hell of a lap dance from a beautiful man and thought she saw something intangible and broken in his eyes. So fucking what? 

Why did that dark, fleeting glance up at her, with his oddly angular face glistening with sweat and his hair soft where it barely brushed the insides of her knees, stick so deep in her mind? Why had she felt something taut as a harp string between them, one end tied around her fourth rib as his hand spanned her waist? Why had that string stretched painfully tight the farther and farther he walked away from her? Why couldn’t she stop thinking about his eyes?

Ridiculous. 

_ You’re projecting with a capital P, kid,  _ she presses through her knuckles into her forehead.  _ There’s nothing there. Go home. You’re alone at a strip club on a Sunday night. He’s just a handsome stranger who made your drunk ass feel all warm and gooey last night.  _

Except...it hadn’t felt all warm and gooey. She’d been half-way coerced by Rose, Jess, and Kay to come out for her birthday the night before. When their revels had taken them to Starkiller, it almost instantly sobered Rey up. She played along for her friends’ sakes, but she was stage-shy, and sex (even barely simulated sex) in public was the last line on her admittedly short list of explorable kinks. Sex with a stranger was on the line above it. 

But something about him had touched her, and no, not in that way. It had stuck in her craw for the rest of the night and she had woken up this morning with a minor headache and his eyes still boring into her. Those eyes, deep brown and empty as the night sky over the Valley, had pulled her back to Starkiller and into his orbit.

She flicks her eyes back up to the stage, daring herself to keep watching. If she saw it again, that emptiness, she would do something.

 

_ You can’t give less for a Sunday crowd _ _,_ Armie had lectured early in his career.   
  
Back then, he couldn’t give much of anything. He was still recovering from the incident.

That fucking incident was the whole reason he was here.

_ Happy place, you dense motherfucker . _

He gives it all. He whips his vest behind him, tossing it away, and begins work on the horrendous, itchy mesh tank top he can’t wait to get off. He begins rubbing his torso up and down, undulating in that pleasurable way that gets people squealing. Usually. When there are more of them, it is a cacophony when he writhes his torso just so. He’s got a good body. That’s one of the few things he’s got. 

Once he can sense them getting bored of his teasing, he parts with the shirt at last. In the colorful, swirling lights, no one can see the scar on his side. They just see his bare abdomen, slightly oiled-up and pleasurably toned, rolling and gyrating to the music. They don’t look closer. He’s grateful for that. They only look down. They know what’s coming next, as does he.

His thumbs hook into the waistband of his leather pants. A chorus of eager hooting and whistling erupts from the small fanclub in front of the stage. He dances closer to them.

He misses his sweatpants. He misses his slippers. His Sunday evening had been planned out perfectly. He wanted a day to lounge around his place, not get dressed, maybe swipe on Tinder for a bit, and catch up on Peaky Blinders. He had purchased some pork chops from the grocery store and found a recipe for a tangy marinade that he had been looking forward to trying out all week. Instead, he’d grabbed a burrito bowl on the way to work, and would probably have a protein shake when he got home. He’d have to do his meal prep after 1 AM when they closed. Assuming he gets off on time. Assuming they cleaned up quickly.

Assuming he doesn’t have any pesky customers to shake off.

He looks up one more time to the girl in the back.

He’d have to do something about her if there was going to be any chance of salvaging this shipwreck of a night.

He practically glows under the lights. Skin pale and gleaming in contrast with what’s left of the harsh black leather get-up, he looks like every kind of trouble that her mother would’ve told Rey about if she’d stuck around.

He’s supposed to look like trouble. And he is damn good at his job. 

She’s transfixed but aware, eyes focused on him but keenly observing as he moves. She thinks she sees a shadow on his left side, just under his rib cage. Mismatched on the other side. She remembers the hint of a long scar on his face from the night before, hidden pretty effectively for the stage by a talented makeup artist, but etched into her memory from her close encounter with him. She had seen a lot of him, after all. 

Deep scars, empty eyes, and black leather. Definitely trouble. But no mother around to warn her away from him.

Rey sees his eyes flick briefly back to her. As if he is making sure that she is still sitting there. 

The music slows, and he turns his back to the crowd, bringing his feet closer together so he could begin the challenging part of the routine: the pants removal.

Christ, he hates these pants. He’d been given no choice. When he started, they had just lost their old leather guy. So he was the New Leather Guy.

Thankfully, he had other costumes, but this was a perennial favorite of audiences, and he’d yet to pawn it off.

Hence, he waits for the slow break in the music. He slides the pants down carefully, and he can feel the stage lights on his suddenly exposed ass.

Screaming. He did it well. He gives a victorious shake, his cheeks jiggling in their thong.

He remembers being uncomfortable with this part once upon a time. Now there is little left for him to be uncomfortable about. 

He is just uncomfortable with everything, he realizes. 

This isn’t where he wants to be. Not tonight, not in general. And it wasn’t the getting naked part. It would have been little better if he were at a restaurant night after night. It wasn’t what he wanted to do, and each day he had to come onstage and pretend that this was okay for now.

And the girl in the back is filling him with increasingly growing dread.

He gets the pants down completely. Few more shakes of his ass.

He turns back around, facing the crowd in nothing more than a black leather thong, motorcycle boots, and a plastered-on expression, reserved for occasions like these. The frontal view of the thong receives a warm greeting, as it usually does. He knows the tricks of the trade by now, and even if he personally lacks charisma, his ass isn’t wanting for it. Time to let the audience cop a feel.

He walks to edge of the stage. He beckons a finger at the tourist group. Permission to engage. The audience gleefully obliges.

He never would have guessed he’d grow up to be a petting zoo animal, but hey, at least a large number of goats and small ponies the world over could empathize with this part of the job.

Rey watches the shrieking audience members paw at him. He barely seems to notice, as if he’s miles away from the stage and the screaming. His eyes catch hers again. His expression is unreadable but those eyes...those black molasses eyes are empty and hollow in the colored lights. The smirk pasted on his face is chipping, and then she sees the pain in the set of his jaw, the tension in every oiled muscle. 

That’s it. She needs to talk to him.

When enough time has passed, he backs away, hearing the familiar ending cue in the music. 

Might as well make something out of tonight. 

As the closing bars of the song blare, he moves to the center of the stage, and gives the front of the thong a sharp tug. The snaps release, and the screaming grows.

It’s not deafening, as it might be on a busy night, but he knows they’re pleased regardless. He’s hard enough. He’s certainly impressive. It’s what they came for.

He can’t bring himself to look toward the girl in the back.

He coyly covers himself, and turns away. He flashes a grin over his shoulder. He knows they will absolutely love the view of his backside in nothing but a pair of slouchy, oversized boots.

He strides away, and when he’s out of sight in the wings, he sighs. 

The pressure in the room seems to lighten by a thousand degrees once Kylo Ren has left the stage. The next act to take his place is a nebbishy little man stripping to “Hot for Teacher” and Rey drowns it out as the thoughts in her head battle for dominance. 

One part of her tugs her toward the door and back out into the cool Nevada morning, given how early it’s about to be. It reminds her about privacy and proper strip club etiquette. It reminds her of the lateness of the hour and the comfort of her bed and how early she needs to be up to open the shop. 

Another part screams to go find the man with the sad eyes. Fuck the hour, fuck the etiquette, fuck the bed, and fuck any idea of a curfew. She is a grown-ass woman who owns her own business and not opening for one morning will not kill her bottom line. It reminds her that there may be a man in a bad place backstage and she saw it. She has a responsibility to say something if no one else cares.

The last and smallest part of her just whimpers, too terrified of the other two to let her stand up. She ignores that part.

With a firm shake of her head, she shuts all voices up and slaps a tenner on the table under her lowball. She tugs her bag across her torso and walks with casual purpose toward the door that says “Staff Only.” Conveniently situated right next to the ladies’ restroom. 

_ Plausible deniability,  _ she thinks to herself with an internal shrug.  _ No, officer, I swear I was just looking for the ladies’ and was in no way stalking the leather daddy who gave me a lap dance for my birthday.  _

She slips through the door easily and, with a deep breath, follows the lights down at the end of the hallway and the sound of running water.

He knows he has to get ready for the final number, but Christ, he hates when he does that. Gets caught up in the moment and self-hatred and just fucking... _ ugh _ . Maybe he figured if he gave the girl in the back a good looksie, she’d leave him be. Maybe he hoped that he’d make enough extra money to...what? What could he really buy now that would get him a chance of getting back in the Octagon any faster?   
  
He wanted to bare himself in a room of strange women late on a Sunday night because he didn’t give a fuck. Or that’s what he told himself. Getting naked and baring all is easy when you just don’t give a fuck It’s just skin. It’s just your body. It’s just another costume.

His heart was still racing with the adrenaline of it. He had never quite gotten over the stage fright of the whole thing. But sometimes surprises like those made the whole thing worth it.

Mitaka began sputtering in shock when he saw Kylo waltzing off stage.  _ Well, someone was surprised .  _

“Are-are we doing that tonight?”

“I don’t know what  _ we _ are doing, but I just whipped my dick out, yeah.”

“Do I…”

“No, man, you don’t have to,” Kylo muttered, pushing past. “But I need a shower after this.”

“Where are you going? We’re on again in 10,” someone else barked, but Kylo waved him off and stormed into the bathroom.

Anything for a moment of peace.

He tries not to think about anything. Just lets the water run over his body. He doesn’t have time to get his hair wet, but he needs to calm down after that jolt to his system. 

The routine would be fine. He knew the choreo well enough. This was an easier costume: pull-away jeans. He looked down. He was getting a bit soft. Shit.

He slams the water off and grabs a towel, dabbing at himself.

He steps out of the shower, and brings the towel to his eyes.

He tries to tell himself he isn’t seeing what he is seeing-- paranoia was, in this situation, the preferred alternative-- but it is hard to deny what is right in front of his eyes.

“Oh holy shit!” squeaks a feminine British voice. The girl from the back of the club whirls around, covering her eyes as her cheeks burn bright red. “Sorry! Oh my god, I am so sorry, I didn’t mean...shit, I am so sorry.”

For some reason, he covers himself with the towel. “What the  _ fuck _ are you doing here?”

_ What the fuck indeed . _

__

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pro-tip: Next time you go to a strip club, throw the dancers handfuls of breadcrumbs and dried corn instead of singles. Conversely, try slipping the goats and alpacas a fiver for a special dance at the petting zoo. Fun for the whole family.


	2. Chapter 2

“I, um...I was just--fuck, um,” she stumbles. “Looking for the ladies’?” It’s a question, not a statement, and for some reason, she can’t think of any answer.

She hadn’t thought she would ever get this far. What the hell is she even doing. And when the fuck is that vodka cranberry going to kick in?

He considers calling for security, but he figures the bouncer is probably prepping for closing. Besides, he remembers lifting her all too easily from the stage back to the floor after giving her a dance last night and knows she’s nothing physically that he can’t handle. Moreover, he knows that to call for backup would undoubtedly interrupt the new number that Mitaka’s been trying out, and, bless his pasty white ass, Kylo isn’t in the mood for one of the man’s meltdowns.

He storms past her and shuts the door, slamming the lock abruptly.

“Bullshit. Why are you here?” he growls in a whisper-yell. “Why are you following me?”

Before she can formulate an answer, there is a sudden knock at the door.

“Hey, man, are you alright? We’re on in a few,” a muffled voice calls from the other side of the door.

Kylo glares at the small woman, one hand still pinned on the door. “Yeah, I’m just…bad pork chops. Catching up to me.”

“Aw, fuck, dude. Do you think you can suck it up for the last number?”

If looks could kill, his glare is a death ray. “Nah, man, it’s rough in here.”

“You sure? Also, why do you sound like you’re right by the door?”

“Trying to clean...you know what, just...don’t come in here for a bit. I’ll mop up.” He takes several large steps towards her, still seething profusely.

“Christ, you sure? You know you won’t get  a cut from the big finale.”

“Yeah, go ahead. Just let them know to change the formation.”

“Can do.” The other man pauses. “Good luck.”

“ _ Thanks _ ,” Kylo snaps.

She looks up at him incredulously for a long moment as Kylo Ren’s coworker grumbles something about ebola past the door. It’s suddenly very quiet in the shower room, the bass of the next number thumping faintly through the wall.

Makeup-free and glistening from his shower rather than body oil, his expression fiery with rage, and his dark eyes flashing with something that finally looks like  _ life _ , Kylo Ren is almost a thousand times more attractive than any amount of leather could make him. He seems...human. He is mad as hell, that’s for sure, but he had had an opportunity to get her ass booted from the club’s premises, and he’d lied for her. Maybe this insane idea had a chance in hell of working.

Rey snorts loudly and grins a little manically. “I think you’re in the wrong line of work, Mr. Ren. You’d make a killing as an improv actor.”

“What? No, don’t change the topic. Why are you following me? Are you trying to get a replay of last night or something? Because you’ll need to pay for that. No free shows.”

He loops the towel around his waist and stands up straight, towering over her. “Were you hoping to get your rocks off with me? Hate to burst your bubble, lady, but I don’t do that. Not for free, anyway, and definitely not here, so whatever you wanted—”

“No! God, no, that wasn’t…” She scrubs her hands over her face, huffing a nervous laugh. “I don’t want that. Not that you’re not incredibly attractive and dynamite in the sack, I’m sure--”

“Please don’t flatter me. I prefer compliments in cash.”

“...But that’s-that’s really not why I’m here,” she finishes firmly.

She exhales mightily, squeezing her eyes shut before looking back up at him with a steely yet genuine expression.

“Are you okay?”

“Okay? Am I okay? There’s a stranger stalking me, naked, in a bathroom at my workplace on a Sunday night. I’m fan-fucking-tastic. Just really goddamn peachy, sweetheart.”

“I’m not stalking you!” she protests indignantly. “I’m just…”  _ Worried about you? Concerned for your well-being? I thought I saw something dead in your eyes while you were simulating cunnilingus on me last night and I wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to see your corpse on the nightly news? _

She sighs again.

“You know what, I’m sorry, I was completely out of line. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. This was a terrible fucking idea, I don’t even know what I was thinking...but I…” She takes a deep breath. “When you were...dancing...last night, I had a...feeling. A bad feeling. That you weren’t okay. In the general sense of the word...fucking hell, I’m doing a crap job of explaining this…”

She looks back up at him, his face cold.

“Hold on a sec,” she mumbles, and goes diving into her purse.

“You’re not a reporter, are you?” Last thing he needs is this getting out to one of those UFC fan sites. He’ll never be able to get back in the Octagon. He’d be the Magic Mike fighter. That might very well be a fate worse than suspension. No thank you.

“What?” she mutters, distracted by the contents of her purse. “No, I’m in antiques. Why would you think that I’m a reporter? Ah, there we go.”

She brandishes an old penny from the bowels of her bag. It’s green and a little fuzzy, probably the oldest piece of currency either has ever encountered, but she grabs the hand that isn’t holding his towel on and presses the little coin into his palm. She tries to ignore the warmth of his skin from the brief contact and releases him.

“There,” she says with a certainty that only the truly insane possess. “Penny for your thoughts. I don’t want to short you what you’re owed.”

“Owed?”

God, what had possessed him to let her stay? He could have kicked her to the curb and had her banned her the moment he spotted her backstage. What was it about her that possessed him to hear her out?

She is cute, that’s for fucking sure. But she isn’t the trouble type, perhaps. No sign of that “I’d like to speak to the manager” haircut that haunts every service industry; just a weird three-bun thing going on. Bleeding heart type trying to get him to see the light? Nah, she’s got on an ancient sci-fi t-shirt, and not a crucifix in sight. She had...taken him by surprise. She seems to have enjoyed his performance the night before, but not to the degree that would make him suspect that she would come back with some delusion of affection or romance or sex or whatever the hell she wanted.

Whatever it was that brought her here, there was now a grimy penny in his hand. He looks at it, his palm still open, as if beseeching her.

Next time Kylo saw him, he was going to strangle Armie Hux for putting him on this shift.

“You really think that this is what I’m worth?”

She frowns and holds up a finger, reaching again into her bag and pulling out a slightly less geriatric cent-piece from its depths. She hands it to him so the two pennies clink dully in his palm.

“Well how about your two cents, then?”

She grimaces slightly. “I’m not saying that this is what you’re worth,” she says quietly. “But if it helps you start talking, then take them.”

She shifts on her feet, fidgeting with the strap of her bag.

“You have to believe me, I am not trying to get anything from you. I genuinely just want to know if you’re alright or not. I know, it sounds stupid, like, why should  _ I  _ care?” She laughs a bit. “Honestly, I don’t even know the answer to that. But I do care, for some reason! Something about you told me that I needed to talk to you, so here I am.”

She holds her hands up, her face contrite and a little defeated.

“You know what, you don’t even have to talk to me...I swear, you’ll never see me again. Just...just consider me someone smiling on the bridge. For what it’s worth...someone out there wants you to be okay.”

The gears slowly begin to click in his head.

“Bridge? What, do you think I’m going to jump?” He clenches the pennies in his fist. “You think I hate myself? Is it because I didn’t touch you right?”

He gets suddenly much closer to her, and his voice drops to a low husky growl, full of lust and promises clearly not meant to be kept. 

“Or did I touch you right, too right, and your boyfriend just can’t keep up? Because he doesn’t  _ know  _ you like I do?”

His work voice. He hates using it without the glow of stage lights. But this chick set off something in him, and he feels the need to fight back.

“Or do you just pity the poor, hot, troubled sex worker and think you can fix him?”

He storms off away from her. His speech returns to normal.

“You’re clever, I give you that. ‘Penny for your thoughts.’ It’s cute. Best come-on I’ve gotten in a while.”

Her face burns, but she doesn’t lower her hard gaze from his dark head.

“And you’re so fucking jaded that someone being concerned for you is instantly a line? Fuck, now you do have my pity. Because that kind of life must really suck for you.”

She pinches the bridge of her nose with her fingers. “God, I’m such an idiot. I’ve obviously made a mistake.”

She turns for the door. But then she stops for a moment, and turns back to him, fire burning bright in her gray-green eyes.

“You know what, how about this, I’ll give you  _ my  _ opinion.”

She stalks toward him, tiny in comparison to his massive frame, but strong and clearly stubborn as hell. She looks like she’s about to jab him in the chest when she stops and her furious face dissolves into something open, honest, and almost...sweet. Not gentle, but there’s a kindness in her expression that Kylo hasn’t seen directed his way in too long.

“They will never get you right,” she murmurs, her voice melting into the steam in the room. “Those people out there? They’ll try to turn you into something, whether you’re it or not, but they’ll never...they’ll never get you right.”

He feels like shit, probably more than was necessary for the situation. This girl, weird as she is, is being  _ nice _ . Something he isn’t really used to. But he really hates the fact that his despair had come through on stage during one of the most intimate moments of the night.

He’d been paid well, but clearly he’d done something to fuck with the birthday girl’s head.

Taking a deep breath, he turns to face her.

“Why do you care about me?” he mutters softly, the closest thing he would approach to contrition. “You don’t know me at all. You don’t even know my name. Did I make you feel  _ that _ good or something?”

She huffs a little laugh.

“Honey, I didn’t feel a damn thing,” she says wryly. “That doesn’t matter. That never even came into the equation.”

He flinches.

“Let’s go back to the idle flattery, then.”

Oh, if this girl had gone to Armie instead of taking pity on him like this, trailing him to ask if he was  _ okay _ , he would have been so fucking fired.

He was slacking. He knew it. They all knew. The choreo didn’t come as easily to him, and with his injury, it took him a while to even get to this level of proficiency. They barely needed a reason to get rid of one of their worst dancers. He had a body, sure, and a  _ look _ , which, while unconventional, still worked, but he lacked the talent of the other guys. And now he was the bad answer with the sad stare.

He had been telling himself that he just needed to survive here until his ban was lifted. Until he got back into more bouts.

The ban had been lifted, but the doctor hadn’t cleared him to fight. So he had no idea when he would really be able to get back to it.

And if he was looking that desperate onstage...Christ, he was going to go off the deep end at this rate.

Somehow, this tiny girl had seen right through him.

_ Shit. _

She laughs for real then, high and silvery. It was charming, genuine. Not tainted by lust or hunger. Just a natural, honest-to-god laugh. He hadn’t heard one that hadn’t been from someone paying him in a long time.

Her shoulders seem to relax.

“Look, I’m just giving you my opinion. It’s the only one I’ve got.”

She shoots him a thin grimace of a smile, starting to back away awkwardly.

“Anyway, Mr. Ren, I’ll go. I’ve said my piece, I’ll leave you alone. I promise, you’ll never see me again. I hope you—”

“What’s your name?” he asks quietly. “You have something to call me. What do I call you?”

Maybe he should have remembered her name when it was announced through the speakers, but he rarely remembered the birthday girls’ names. They were interchangeable. She, however, was determined to be memorable.

She pauses, blinking owlishly.

“Rey. Rey Bennett. That’s Rey with an ‘e’ not an ‘a,’” she murmurs. “Not like a ray of sunshine.”

“Well, you certainly are that, Rey,” he grumbles, a slight tint of amusement coloring his voice. “But I still don’t get it. Why me? Do you normally look for...people on the bridge?”

He digs a finger in his ear to get the little bit of water that had dribbled in.

“You came alone. You’re not dressed to party. You clearly don’t frequent these kinds of places. You’re a good girl with weird, kinky friends who dragged you here for a few naughty laughs on your birthday. What really made you think you needed to talk to me tonight?”

She shivers a little at being called a “good girl.” That was definitely unexpected.

He wanders around the space a bit, afraid to be under her scrutiny for too much longer. 

“You remind me of the guy from  _ Catcher in the Rye. _ Pays a hooker to listen to his problems.”   
  
He laughs at his own joke. “Except I’m the hooker and you’re paying me to talk to you about my problems.”

“Yeah but I look way better in a deerstalker than Holden Caulfield,” she chuckles with a grin.

“Caulfield! That’s his name!” he says triumphantly. “And I bet you look even better than Sherlock Holmes himself in one.”

“Idle flattery will get you nowhere, Mr. Ren.” They snicker together as something eases in the air.

They are quiet for a while, the silence stretching between them growing warmer as the room chilled around them. It feels like breaking in new shoes, fitting but still tense in some spots. She leans her back against the other end of the row of lockers, fiddling with a loose thread on the hem of her shirt.

“I don’t know,” she mumbles. “It was the way you looked at me on stage last night... I had to make sure I wasn’t seeing things. My gut told me that I needed to come back to make sure you were alright. And then I saw that look again, tonight.” She shrugs against the cool steel at her back. “So here I am.”

He relaxes his fist, and looks at the pennies within. 

“You know, I hear it a lot: ‘You have nice eyes.’ Get compliments on them all the time. It’s like women don’t want to admit they just were staring at my crotch a minute ago when I was onstage. I was just a body. Now I’m on their level with human features and a voice and all they can think is ‘Gee, Mister, you sure have lovely eyes.’”

He laughs at himself. “I’m not very good at my job, am I though? I’m supposed to be able to hide that look when I’m at work. Maybe I need to try more glitter or oil or something. Maybe then no one will look at my eyes.”

Rey’s brow creases. She doesn’t know how to respond. Should she even say anything? What  _ could _ she say?

“Can...can I ask why? Why do you have a look that you need to hide?” she whispers.

He thinks for a moment, words rolling around in his head. When the music stops abruptly.

Closing time.

“Oh, shit,” he growls.

He rushes over to the door (as fast as one can move on a wet bathroom floor in shower sandals).

“You have to go,” he commands. He flips the lock on the bathroom door and slowly peers out into the hallway, only to slam the door shut seconds later.

From the sound of voices in the hall, a few of the new men, clad only in their g-strings, were making their way to the back.

“Fuck.” His eyes scan the room. “Get in the shower.”

“Excuse me?” she squawks as he grabs her arm to steer her toward the nearest shower stall.

“Look, Rey-of-Sunshine, you can’t be back here. I’ll be in deep shit. You’ll be in deep shit. One or both of us could leave this place in a cop car. Just…”

He grimaces at the innuendo in his mind. 

“I hope you don’t mind getting wet.”

She rolls her eyes. “Oh for fuck’s sake, you can’t be serious.”

The hard look in his eyes says he is. She blanches as her back hits the damp tile in the narrow shower cubicle. He crowds her in and she nearly chokes on her breath.

“Why are you doing this for me?” she whispers frantically. “Ten minutes ago you were about to kick me out.”

He snaps the curtain shut behind him.

“Maybe I really do like being complimented on my eyes after all,” he mutters in her ear, reaching around her to feel the shower knobs.

“Again, sorry about this.”

The water is bloody freezing as it trickles out the ancient showerhead. She squeals, but his broad hand presses across her mouth to muffle her cry. She silently prays that her bag and its contents won’t be irrevocably damaged by the time this little intrigue was over, but her thin T-shirt and jeans will definitely be showing their battle scars. She twists her face out of his grip and glares sullenly up at him.

“I don’t know whether to thank you for hiding me or smack you for giving me hypothermia,” she hisses through chattering teeth.

He silently turns the other knob, the stream lifting a bit as the water slowly began to heat up.

“Sorry. Better?” he whispers.

“I’m still soaked, but yes, thank you very much. And yes, I know, that’s what she said, fuck you for even thinking it, you ass,” she grumbles as he makes to open his mouth for a retort.

“That wasn’t what I was thinking. I’m just...well…” He smirks. “You’re right, I  _ am _ used to hearing women say that.”

An echo begins to reverberate through the hall and into the locker room.

“Ben, you still sick in there?” a disembodied voice hollers.

“Shit, Rey, your feet!” Kylo exclaims quietly.

“Wha—” She doesn’t get to finish her statement before he grips her around the backs of her thighs and hoists her up, wrapping her legs around his waist. She squeaks and her eyes go wide as she scrabbles for purchase against his shoulders. His broad, smooth, strong shoulders…

She isn’t entirely sure whether the heat sizzling through her is due to the shower or her proximity to her unlikely rescuer.

“Yeah, I'm here,” Kylo hollers over the sound of the running water, masking his voice in an exhausted rasp, always one for dramatics. Of course, hoisting another human did make faking the vocal strain easier; the woman pressed scandalously against him is light in his arms.

“Still feeling like garbage. Everyone gone already?”

“No, they’re cleaning up backstage,” the disembodied voice yells back, the sound moving in the room as the man removes his stage facade and prepares to blend back into the world. “They’ll be done soon. You gonna be okay getting home, man?”

Kylo shifts Rey in his arms, trying not to bring his face too close to hers, which is hovering near his shoulder.

“Probably.” He pauses. “Hey, do you think you can let the others know to just go ahead without me? I can lock up tonight. I might be here a while, and I don’t want you all waiting.”

“Damn, do you need me to call someone?”

“No, I’ll be good. Like I said, just need some time to get it out of my system.” 

Rey bites her lip to stifle the giggle bubbling up in her. Her fingers curl in against his damp skin. 

“Laying it on a bit thick, don’t you think?” she whispers into his ear.

"Do you want to be caught or not?" he growls into her ear.

There was a time when he would have been uncomfortable in this situation. Rey was a stranger, clothed and clinging to his wet, mostly naked body. Usually customers would have to pony up extra for this kind of treatment, but she was getting it for free, because he was a lonely coward who let this stalker stay the staff changing room because…why?

He couldn’t say. Maybe because, weird as he found this whole situation, she was nice to him. She asked him if he was alright. He wasn’t sure what she wanted or how she had guessed, but alright was definitely far from what he was. But he hadn’t told a soul. He didn’t have a soul to tell, really, except this girl clinging onto him as if she were a cat stuck in a tree.

At least he knows her name, though, and something about her career. Antiques, she'd said. More than he knew about a lot of the women touching him.

"The more I say, the less they'll want to know. Now  _ SHHH _ ," he whispers, perhaps a bit too harshly.   
  
"You say something, Ben?"   
  
" _ Shhhhhit _ ," Kylo says, a recovery. "Water temp changed. It's fucking cold."   
  
"Oh."

Rey sidles back from him slowly, trying not to make unnecessary noise or throw her human perch off balance. The tile is cold beneath the bony protrusions of her shoulder blades as her back meets the wall. The chill seeps through her damp T-shirt and she hisses, shivering, her legs tightening reflexively around his waist. 

“Ben?” she mouths at him, her eyebrows up.

He gives her a dirty look. 

" _ Not now _ ," he mouths back deliberately.   
  
After a moment a locker slams.   
  
"Feel better, dude," a voice says, and Rey and Kylo can hear each step as the man walks out of the room, the door slamming behind him.

She listens for a moment before squirming closer to him again. 

“Think we’re safe now?” she whispers. When did the two of them become a “we”?

"For the moment. The other guys will be coming back soon."

He releases her carefully, then, standing in the running stream of water, rests his arm above her head on the shower wall, his body forming a barrier to keep her dry.

He’s an absurdly effective umbrella and she almost giggles again at the thought. She really shouldn’t be surprised; the man’s a goddamn giant. Even at her taller-than-average height, she’s still only tall enough to be face-to-tits with Ben (not that she’s complaining really). 

Ben...Huh.    
  
“So... _ Ben _ ,” she drawls quietly, digging into the ‘n’ at the end. “I mean, I kind of figured that ‘Kylo Ren’ was just a stage name but...I dunno, Ben seems way too ordinary for...” She trails off.

"Please don't," he sighs.

“No, no, I swear, it’s a lovely name,” she beams up at him teasingly. “Really.”

Suddenly she realizes that he’s staring down at her, his head leaning against his forearm over her own upturned face. With his face shadowed like this, his eyes look almost black. But they’re not empty. She watches him watch her, his gaze flickering over every inch of her face as if to make a study of it. There’s heat behind those eyes now.    
  
And it’s directed straight at her.    
  
She tries to break his stare, looks down, and immediately thinks better of it. Honestly, she and a dozen other thirsty audience members had seen every last inch of him on stage earlier, it really shouldn’t make her embarrassed. And for that matter, his towel was still valiantly holding on to his hips, so it’s not as if she can see anything.   
  
She finally settles for a spot on his collarbone. The end of that long canyon of a scar that starts above his eyebrow curls like a fishhook just under his clavicle, as if there was a wire dragging the bone further up his chest.

"This will go a lot easier for both of us if you just...don't," he says calmly. 

Being exposed while being a character, a dirty biker fetish amalgam made for just the purposes of female pleasure? Sure. Easy to stand naked in a room when you have that little piece to yourself. You know this can't leave the building. It won't follow you. And even if it does, it won't be  _ you _ . It's that other guy. Plausible deniability.   
  
When you're offstage, however, and you are buck naked staring down a customer armed with that little fact that you keep hidden, you begin to feel suddenly more exposed than ever before.   
  
And you might start to like it.

“Don’t what?” she whispers back defiantly.

"Call me that. You don't get to be so familiar just because you've seen me wiggle my ass two nights in a row."

She frowns.    
  
“I’m not calling you Ben because I feel like I’m familiar with you. Fuck, I don’t know you from some rando on the street.”    
  
She tucks a piece of wet hair behind her ear.    
  
“I guess I figured you’d rather go by your real name as opposed to the stage name. Since you’re not onstage,” she mutters.    
  
She’s quiet for a long moment.    
  
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

_ Dick _ , he chides himself. He turns the water off, then runs a hand through his hair to get it out of his face so he can look at her.    
  
"No, it's fine. I'm just being sensitive. I'm not used to being nice to people who don't slip twenties into my waistband."   
  
He pauses. "I appreciate the thought. But Ben... it’s not usually what customers call me."

"Well I'm a pretty shit customer, so maybe you can make an exception."

“Should I?”

She winks up at him. “Up to you, Mr. Ren.”

There is a cacophony of voices from the other side of the bathroom door.    
  
Without thinking, Kylo scoops her back up into his arms, pressing the two of them closer to the wall.

Her hands find the back of his neck instinctively and she dimly realizes that he's probably got the softest hair ever. He's hoisted her up so that she's just scarcely taller than him and it forces him to look up at her. Just like last night, when he'd had his head between her knees and his eyes had burrowed into her soul and refused to let her go unscathed. His breath gusts against her collarbone and stirs butterflies to life in her stomach.   
  
_ He is very good at his job, Rey _ , she has to remind herself.

His heart is racing in his chest as he hears his coworkers waltz in.

“Wait, are we all closed up out there?” a voice asked. “I know we’re usually fast on Sundays, but shit.”

“No. Apparently Ben’s coming back. Went outside to puke his brains out. Mitaka told me,” a second voice explained.

“You actually believe that?” It is hard to keep track of voices now as a number of bodies push in. 

“Why else do you think he would miss the final number?”

“Because he’s a lazy motherfucker,” one says with a laugh. “The dude is shit at his job.”

“He’s not that bad…” another weakly begins. “I mean, he makes money, but he can’t really dance worth a shit.”

One of them cracks up laughing. Ben just stares blankly at Rey. 

“I mean, don’t get me wrong: fuck him. He’s got a body, so he doesn’t have to work.”

“He should work though. He actually thinks he’s going to get back into the UFC.”

“Jesus. Really?”

“Yeah, he’s that delusional.”

“He should get better at the fucking choreo, then. Or get better at booking private gigs. Because there’s no way they’re going to take him back.”

Rey can't explain why a surge of protective instinct clenches her gut briefly. Maybe it's because the emptiness is back in Ben's eyes. Unconsciously, her fingers curl into the wet hair at the nape of his neck. She looks back down at him, her brow crinkled in confusion.

He's looking right through her. He shifts her a little in his grip, but otherwise, he is a statue. He is barely there.

Her fingers flex at the back of his neck. She leans down to his ear.

"Ben?"

He shivers; whether it is from her touch, her voice, or the cold, he has yet to figure out.

“I mean, isn’t his mom a governor or something? Didn’t she disown him?”

“You mean before he cold-cocked a guy on national television? Or when he started stripping?”

“Don’t know which is worse. He’s a real fucking winner alright. Whipping it out on a Sunday night.”

“It’s all he’s got.”   
  
Ben winces at that.

There’s a rustling just outside of the shower curtain.   
  
“God, I feel gross. I’m going to rinse off.”

There’s a slight tugging on the shower curtain.

Rey hazards a glance at Ben. His face cycles through all the stages of grief and his arms tighten around her.

He was about to get caught with a customer in the locker room after skipping a number.

He was so fucking fired.

And yet.

He was  _ finally _ fucking fired. No obligation to this place anymore.

But no money, and nowhere else to go.

Bargaining would begin in a few moments.

“Yo, man, I would NOT go in there,” a voice shouts from across the room. “Ben was in the showers after his last number.”

With a startled cry, the curtain was released. 

“FUCK. Which one was he in?”

“No idea, man, but they share a drain.”

“Fuck. Fine, guess I’m going home to shower.” 

Ben exhales, and Rey can feel her body dropping several inches as the tension flows out of him.

“And you’re sure he’s closing up?”

“Yeah, his locker’s still closed. I’ll let Armie know.”

It takes another few endless minutes for Ben's coworkers to finish pulling their shit together and leave, laughing uproariously into the distance. The water has long since gone cold and Rey is shaking in his arms.    
  
"I...I think they're gone," she mumbles.

"Yeah."   
  
He slowly lowers her to the ground and releases her, and without another word, then walks to the corner where he scoops up his abandoned black boots.

She ventures out of the shower stall after him, her arms crossed over her chest and shivering.    
  
"At the r-risk of rep-p-peating m-myself," she chatters, "are y-you ok-k-kay?"

He pauses. There are many things he wishes to say. Many more he wishes he could do. But he just calmly turns back to her.   
  
He puts on his best customer service voice.   
  
"Thank you for paying me a visit, Miss Rey-of-Sunshine. I'm sorry for our little encounter in the showers, but I hope you'll forgive me. I enjoyed your company. Please, let me see you out."

"You...d-d-didn't answer m-my question." Her voice is even despite the stutter, not accusing but firm even as her thin shoulders shake.   
  
She takes a deep breath, trying to steady her tremors. She forces herself into his line of sight, forces herself to look at his eyes.   
  
"Ben...are you...okay."

He steadies himself. When his voice returns, it is muted. Haunted.   
  
"Usually when they mock me to my face, it's a bit gentler. You think I'd have thicker skin by now."   
  
He laughs bitterly. His eyes don't laugh along.   
  
"There's a team of surgeons at Vegas General who can tell you precisely how thin my skin is."

She sits on the bench between the lockers and curls her knees up into her chest, holding her core heat inside her. She rests her chin on her kneecaps.   
  
"What happened?"

"What did you hear?" He turns his back to her, and fiddles with the combination on a small locker.

"Just now? That you used to be a fighter, you knocked a guy out on national television, and you don't talk to your mum anymore," she says matter-of-factly. "Not much to go on. That's why I'm asking  _ you _ ."

He pulls out his book bag from the locker and fishes around in it for his shirt.   
  
"Well, yeah. Don't know what you got out of the impromptu roast the guys just had.” He takes a deep breath before he begins. 

“I was a UFC fighter. Been studying mixed martial arts for years." He casts a wary glance in her direction. "That interesting to you at all?"

She shrugs. "I'm not really a pay-per-view kind of gal," she admits. "But I can appreciate skill in a sport. Were you any good?"

He smirks, a little proud as he pulls the tank top over his head.   
  
"I was pretty exceptional. Not a bad record for how new I was. But I kept getting warned about my temper. Got into a match, a big one, and my opponent kept muttering shit under his breath. It was really weird but I kept going. It's part of the game, right?"   
  
He returns to dig through his bag. "Turns out he's saying shit about my family. My dead dad. My mom. My exes. It's really crude and gross and I can't take it. He takes a cheap shot at me, I explode and give him one back. Unfortunately, mine was harder and between matches with a camera right up on me and next thing I know my knuckles hurt and this guy is on the ground."   
  
He pulls out a pair of boxer briefs. "Not proud of that, but it happened," he says with a shrug.

“Shit...you blacked out?”

"I...yeah. I've never been so angry before. Or since."   
  
This was the most bashful he'd felt since he'd arrived at work. His body was fine to expose: it was desirable. It served a variety of purposes. His mind, however, was full of ugly, dark corners that this strange but attractive woman was eager to cast into the light.   
  
"I was suspended for it. For a year."

“Still angry?”    
  
Again, her tone isn’t accusatory. She seems...genuinely interested in what he has to say.

"In a different way, Miss Rey-of-Sunshine," he says softly. "I am angry every day."

“Is it because of that scar on your face?” she murmurs.

"There's something on my face?" he asks drolly as he awkwardly removes the towel from his waist and steps into his underwear. For some reason, her eyes on him now fill him with anxiety. And maybe something else.

She huffs a laugh.    
  
“Sorry, bet you get that a lot,” she says sheepishly, squeezing her legs tighter to herself. The wet denim creaks behind her knees.    
  
“I’m nosy as hell. Makes me good at my job, but shit at people. Don’t mind me.”

"You? Nosy? The girl who follows her birthday stripper around to ask about his feelings?"    
  
He throws a glance over his shoulder at her. He's smirking. It's even reaching his eyes this time.   
  
"No, the scar is related. From that night, but several hours later.."

She raises her eyebrows as if to say, “And?”

He pulls his sweatpants out of his bag, shaking them out with a flourish.   
  
"That incident in the Octagon pissed off a lot of people. And rightly so. I knew it as soon as I did it, and I was preparing to make a big apology for it. Take my lumps, figure in time I would be let back. Just had to do anger management or something. My manager, however, was not a generous loser. So when I was leaving after the match, I took a walk to clear my head, and he had a team of goons follow me. More guys than...you don't want to hear this part."

The intensity of her stare at that point says otherwise.    
  
“I asked, so yeah, I want to hear it,” she says lowly.

"Well, I'll try to keep it from getting graphic. Got cornered by a group of guys. Switchblades. They were going to give me a warning, not attack me or kill me, but I started fighting back." He shrugs. "I'm an MMA fighter. What did they think I was going to do? So they fought harder."   
  
"The one on my face could have been worse, but it missed my eye.” He turns to her and rolls up his shirt. “This one, however, kept me in intensive care for days."

She hisses, but leans closer. It’s a gnarled knot of scars just under his ribs, discolored and nowhere near old enough for Rey’s comfort. She finds herself reaching a hand out toward him before she thinks better of it.    
  
“Fuck...” she mutters. “They went for a lung, didn’t they.”

"And they succeeded."

She flicks her gaze back up to his face.    
  
“You’re probably the luckiest son of a bitch I’ve ever met. How the hell are you still alive?”

"A good Samaritan who found me in a puddle of blood on the pavement and several costly medical treatments," he says, releasing his shirt. "Luck is an interesting perspective on this whole situation, I will give you that."

“Well what’s your perspective on it?”

He thinks for a moment.   
  
"I have a lot more fighting to do before I can do the fighting I want to do. I shouldn't hate this job. The nudity, the commercialized sexuality, that's not really what bothers me. I'm used to being a toy, something consumable. First I was an action figure, now I'm a sex doll. Each day I'm here, I'm getting further away from what I wanted to be. And that's what gets me the most. I feel like I'm locking myself down into being this, and not who I want."   
  
He meets her stare, and looks away. "This isn't luck. This is something else."

“Who do you want to be, then?” she asks quietly.

"I tell myself I want to go back to fighting. I want to make that my life again," he says, shrugging. "I’m older. I was injured. I don't know if that is still a way forward for me anymore."

“Did it make you happy?”

"I thought it did. It was all I was good at."    
  
He shuffles awkwardly, then grabs his bag again and pulls out a pair of socks.   
  
"I'm not sure that MMA is still an option for me, if I can pick up where I left off....or if this is it. Or if I even want either, or if I’ve just put that work on a pedestal and assumed that was it. That was all I could ever become. Since the..." He waves at his side generally. "The incident, I haven't really thought about it as a reality. I like to think it’s there over the horizon, but it never feels like I am getting closer. I think to think of this as temporary. Just as a transient state. I train, I work out, I dance. One day that won't be true anymore. But I don't know what I'll give up when I get to whatever’s in the distance."

Her legs uncurl and she sits forward, her face solemn.    
  
“Take it from someone who knows; living in a transient state isn’t living. It’s just waiting for the expiration date.”    
  
She looks up at him with a grim sort of smile. “That’s not a life.”

"No, you're right about that." He takes a seat beside her, putting on his socks.   
  
"But Kylo Ren is beloved by many, however superficially. He's appealing. He’s a product. He’s consumable. Ben Solo is real, and flawed, and absolutely hated by all. When I was in the hospital, I didn’t get any visitors. I got a call from my trainer and a card from my mom. That was it. I was in and out of there for a month."

“I don’t hate you,” she whispers. She sneaks a shy glance at him.    
  
“For what that’s worth.”

"Sweetheart, you learned my name fifteen minutes ago with your legs around my waist. Give it time."

She laughs. “Fair enough, but that’s exactly my point!”   
  
She turns on the bench to face him, crossing her legs beneath her. Her eyes glimmer with conviction.    
  
“How can you hate someone you don’t really know? Those people out there who ‘hate’ you look at you through a microscope, dissect you into little pieces and think they understand you. Think they have a right to hate you.”   
  
She pauses her impassioned tirade.    
  
“But they’ll never get you right.”

He hesitates, letting her words land.

"You think very highly of the guy who simulated cunnilingus on you for your amusement," he says with a weak smile, turning to face her. "It means a lot, really. But I don't get it...you don't need to do this for me. Really."

She smiles timidly back.    
  
“One good turn deserves another, I guess.” She chuckles faintly. “I don’t know, maybe I hope that someone would do the same for me if the moment arose. Be that smile on the bridge.”

"You keep saying that. Do you think I'm going to jump?"

"No! No..." She practically jumps to reassure him. "It's a weak metaphor. More like 'see something, say something,' but you're obviously not an unattended piece of luggage."    
  
She giggles weakly at her own joke before exhaling with a long sigh, her body deflating with it.    
  
"Honestly, I'm just a nobody who felt a momentary connection with a stranger and...shit, I don't even know. Maybe this is the moment where Rey Bennett has finally cracked. Maybe I'm just desperately lonely and wanted..."   
  
She stops herself, shakes her head a bit, and grimaces a small smile as she looks back at him.   
  
"I should go," she says. "It's late and I'm sure you'd rather be...pretty much anywhere other than the locker room of your strip club talking to a complete nutter like me."   
  
Rey goes to stand, holding her hand out to shake.    
  
"Thank you, Mr. Ren, for your patience and your time. I'm sorry that you lost money because of me. I don't have much on me, but if you want to send a bill to me at Scavengers' Outpost Antiques and Salvage, I will be happy to reimburse you for what you've lost."

Not for the first time, he looks up at her, and she thinks she sees something again in his eyes.

Her hand still outstretched, she waits with a soft expression.    
  
"Mr. Ren?"

Despite his initial irritation at Rey’s presence, he couldn’t help the feeling of dread creeping in his gut at the thought of her departure.

She had been there at his lowest moment of the night, a high point in a night of lows: she had heard his coworkers’ ridicule of him, and she had thought nothing less of him. She reacted not in outrage, in anger at him, but in concern.

He realized the pain in his gut was from a connection he had never expected. He was drawn to this woman’s earnestness. He wanted to stay mad, stay distant. But every time he tried to push her away, she made him regret it with her kindness, her unconditional acceptance.

He had the chance to get rid of her for good, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it.

He looks up her arm, tracing a line from her shoulder to her face, then speaks.   
  
"You know, it's considered bad manners to watch the show and not tip the guys, and you were certainly watching me," he says carefully.   
  
"But, given the fact that you're without a doubt the least creepy customer to ever wait around for me after work, I will let you off the hook. And don't worry about paying me for the last dance. It was just a finale. I'll be fine."   
  
He stands.   
  
"But you can do one thing for me."

Something in her chest tightens and the butterflies in her stomach multiply.    
  
"I'm almost afraid to ask," she says shakily as her eyes follow him up to his full height.

"I know you're probably itching to go now that the show's over, but care to keep a guy company while he closes up?" he asks, hands burrowing in his pockets.

Her hand drops and she exhales a breath she hadn't realized she was holding.   
  
"Really? You want me to hang around after all..." She gestures between the two of them. "...this?"   
  
She tugs uselessly at her soggy t-shirt and checks her water-logged watch. She thanks her lucky stars that the old thing is still kicking. A little after 1 am.  _ So much for going to bed at a decent hour,  _ chides the responsible side of her brain. The other side flips it off.   
  
"You're sure?"

He shrugs, walking over to his locker and grabbing his sneakers.    
  
"Yeah, why not?"   
  
He closes the door and takes a seat again.    
  
"Unless you've gotten the answers you sought."   
  
He slides one shoe on, then the other.   
  
"Unless I've been mistaken, and you actually are as crazy as the others, but you're also super clever and manipulative and figured out that the best way to make me trust you is to admit you’re crazy. In which case, bravo."   
  
He stands again. "I guess I'm just choosing to believe you're nice, and now that you got me started talking, well..."   
  
He bends over to pick up his book bag, and digs in the bottom.    
  
"Maybe I feel that connection, too. Or maybe I'm just desperately lonely too. And this is definitely the most pleasant conversation I've had in this room, so..."

Her cheeks warm and she laughs quietly.    
  
"Alright. Sure, why not."   
  
She makes her way toward the door, leaning up against the door jamb with her arms crossed.   
  
"Why does it feel like a porno is about to break out in this strip club?" she snickers. "This is how they usually start, isn't it? Two people...closing up...late at night..." She waggles her eyebrows ridiculously. " _ Alone _ ."

He pulls out a garment from the bottom of his bag and drops the bag on the bench.    
  
"You have horrendous taste in porn, sweetheart. And you're hearing that from a sex worker."   
  
He hands her the garment. It's an oversized hoodie. "Besides, if I wanted to star in a cliche porno with you, I would have tried something in the shower."

She accepts the hoodie and the ‘sweetheart’ with a smile and tugs it on. It's huge on her, falling easily to mid-thigh. She can't quite describe the way the soft material smells, but she somehow instantly feels...comfortable. Something she had never expected to feel alone with a strange man in an empty building.   
  
"That so?" she quips. "Should I be flattered or insulted?"

"Well, I'm still talking to you after that, and we're not chatting about my rates, so that, at the very least, should be a comforting sign."    
  
He shoulders his bag and opens the door, propping it.

She shrugs. "Alright then."   
  
She gestures grandly with one sleeve-swamped hand.    
  
"Lead the way, Mr. Ren."

"You know," he begins, flicking off the light. "I think I do prefer Ben after all. Mr. Ren sounds like 'Sir Bazooka Joe.' Feels as funny as it sounds."

She cackles as she moves past him into the dimly lit hallway, her face breaking out into a wide grin that had her namesake shining behind it.    
  
"Ben it is, then."

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ben Solo is a stripper with a heart??
> 
> Of gold?? Or some other metal???


	3. Chapter 3

  
They walk back toward the front of the club, the house lights cold and sterile in comparison to the reds and purples casting the room into sensual shadow not half an hour earlier. The room looks so much dingier and smaller in this light; it's just like any other place once the people and their sins have been drained out of it. Rey had seen countless salvage jobs that look like this, emptied out and picked clean and all mystique wiped away, nothing left but the bones.    
  
The tables are empty and the chairs are stacked and the floor is swept. Were this  _ her _ job, she'd only just be getting started with the real work.   
  
"Is there anything else that needs doing?" she asks, looking back at...Ben with a smirk. "Need I be on the lookout for waylaid cucumbers or other vegetal contraband?"

He walks to the front door and tugs it, checking the lock.   
  
"If that's the kind of attitude you have towards human sexuality, I'm genuinely surprised your friends didn't take you to Chuck E. Cheese for your birthday,” he calls over his shoulder. “At least then the guy in the rat suit would have to answer to your questions about inappropriate uses of produce."

She laughs again, hoisting herself up onto the stage to sit at the edge, kicking her dangling legs aimlessly.    
  
"It's not my attitude on human sexuality, it's my attitude on the horny housewives of Clark County. If you went to the same showing of Fifty Shades as I did, you'd have the same concerns I do."

"Oh I didn't have to go to any showings to get the experience. The audience just came here afterwards when their husbands were away on business trips," he says, casually meandering behind the bar.   
  
"You didn't see me during the ‘Fifty Shades’ business show we occasionally resurrect. I've always done the bad boy biker number, but they also put me in this tearaway suit..."    
  
He waves a hand in her direction.   
  
"Probably nothing of interest to you."

"Oh my god, you're kidding me," she chokes, before putting on her best sultry American accent. "Mr. Ren will see you now..."

She tips her head back with a grin. "God, that's bloody brilliant."

"Tie bondage. Turns out a lot of moms are into that," he says, checking the cash drawer one final time.

"I bet."   
  
She cranes her neck to see him over the bar. "Anything I can help with?"

"Not really. Just doing some final checks."    
  
He leans down across the wood surface, still sticky despite a recent scrubbing by the bartender at last call.   
  
"I guess I should tell you this: I don't hate my job. I mean, I hate it as much as most people despise working, but the sex part doesn't particularly bother me. That's not why I seemed like I was on a ledge or whatever."

She pulls a leg up and rests her chin on her knee again, her fingers peeking out of the overlong sleeves of the borrowed sweatshirt to fiddle with her wet shoelaces.    
  
"Oh?"

"I mean, I found this job because I was a bit strapped for money after the incident and all my medical bills, sure. I'm not the office type, and I'm too in my head for food service— I've tried it, trust me, I can't keep the orders straight and walk at the same time. I needed something quick, and a guy I knew set me up at this place. Took a little getting used to, but I like my body. It’s not like I wore much in the Octagon all those years. What's a little less?"   
  
His look at her is challenging; he finds surprisingly that he likes this kind of attention. He likes her. He likes her looking at him, thinking about him. He wants her to ask him more.

She shivers slightly under his scrutiny. That look spoke of bloodied knuckles and arms lifted high in victory and rage-powered muscle. She sees a jaguar crouching behind his eyes at that look.    
  
“Makes sense,” she says easily. “And what does your girlfriend think about all of this?”

"She loves it. She's my best customer."

She tries not to look disappointed.    
  
“Good for you! Found yourself a nice progressive girl to come home to very late at night.”

He comes around the bar.   
  
"Yeah, and if I have a really good customer at work, I bring her home for a threesome, and we all have a happy ending."

She glares at him flatly.    
  
“Hardy-fucking-har.”

"Oh, you  _ did _ figure out that I was fucking with you! I am so pleased," he purrs.

She rolls her eyes and flips the bird.

"Wow! Alright Rey-of-Sunshine." He laughs, pausing in front of her. "No, I don't have a girlfriend, since you were so casually fishing for information. Not that the guys here don't, but I haven't been able to swing many successful dates since I started my new career."   
  
Eyebrows go up. “That bad?”

"Hookups I do fine with. It’s a little harder to find a gal who would stick with a guy in my current position. I usually have to start them off with gently introducing what I do. 'Yeah, I'm a dancer.' They think, what, I do backup for Britney or whatever? Get to the date. 'I'm an exotic dancer.' Fine. They don’t think about it. After apps are served: 'Well, yeah, this one time at the strip club where I work...' That’s when it really hits them. And usually they ghost once I get the check. If the date even lasted through entrees. Some girls try to be open-minded, but it usually falls through when they start to talk about futures, since I’m not exactly ‘Mr. Right At The Moment.’ The ones that are usually the most comfortable with me? Yeah, they are in a long-term thing cruising for a third, whether or not their partner is aware of it."   
  
He leans against the stage next to her. "Also, bear with me on this: I'm  _ painfully _ shy."

The eyebrows go up another incredulous inch.    
  
“ _ You _ ?  _ You _ are shy?” She blinks. “Maybe shy has a different meaning in the UK, care to elaborate?”

"I can put myself out there, no problem. I mean, sure, it was freaky at first to show off what we've spent years being conditioned culturally to be ashamed of, but my body doesn't need to carry a conversation. It can  _ talk, _ right? But it doesn't have to listen. I can just emote and react. Once you get used to strangers taking pleasure from touching you and trying to pleasure you, it's really quite easy. And as someone who has had a lot of hands on him, both tender and vicious..."    
  
He shrugs.    
  
"I can't say what I feel, though. I feel things, but...it doesn't come out. What those guys said about me? It hurts. I can't tell you why...I mean, I think I can. But I only have one word for how I  _ feel _ about it: 'ow.' That's more than I have in most other scenarios."

“Huh. Then, uh, how do you explain this conversation?” The corner of her mouth quirks up. “Because I’m getting a lot more than just ‘ow.’”

"An anomaly. One that proves me right. Besides, as I'm sure you didn't fail to notice that I've been pretty much naked for at least half the conversation."

“I did indeed notice. I just don’t know how your state of undress has anything to do with you spilling your guts to someone you’ve only just met.”

"It's easier to spill your guts when there is nothing covering them," he says, his hands balling and uncurling. "Like I said: painfully shy. If I'm already exposed, I guess it's easier to let it all out."

She nods. “Yeah. Okay, yeah, I can definitely get that.”   
  
She looks out into the club, empty and close even from the stage, and wonders how much closer it gets when there is a pack of hungry hyenas sitting in the audience.    
  
“How do you feel now?”

"Like I probably owe you money for therapy," he mutters.

She smiles softly. “I’d say I definitely got my two cents’ worth.”   
  
She turns to look at him and he seems like he’s just shed a hundred pounds from his shoulders.    
  
“You don’t owe me anything, Ben,” she says quietly. “Really.”

"Good, because you're too damn genuine and sweet for me to offer to make it up to you in my usual way," he says, gazing distantly across the club.

“You think I’m...sweet?” she stutters.

"Unless I was right about you being a master manipulator, yeah. You came here to check on me. Hell, you've been a better friend than I've had in a while. Probably wouldn't even charge you, even if this was all a ruse to get in my pants," he muses.

“Charge me for...” Her eyes go wide. “...oh.”   
  
Her hands tighten on the edge of the stage. She can feel her pulse racing through the pads of her fingers.    
  
“I didn’t think that was a thing.”

"I have had sex with women for money, Rey" he says patiently. "When I asked if that was what you were seeking, it’s because usually, that’s what women who follow me are after. I’ve been approached after shows for...additional jobs, and if the money is good, I have been known to say yes. Really, it’s not too different from what a lot of private strippers do, and I have worked private gigs as well, and those can get a lot raunchier than anything you see here. Part of the reason why dating is so hard. I'm okay with the work I do. But I can understand why potential partners won't be."

She frowns and shakes her head.    
  
“No, I mean, as long as you’re safe about it, I—“    
  
She stops with a manic laugh and hides her face in her hands.    
  
“God, I sound like some teenager’s mum on an after-school special.”

"Tested every few weeks," he proclaims proudly. “I have a clean bill of health.”   
  
He cocks his head at her. "What were you surprised by?"

“I guess, it feels like it breaks the—god this sounds ridiculous—the sanctity of the strip club. Like in here it’s an illusion of sex and it never goes farther than that. Dunno, it feels like some illicit, taboo thing that gets exploited for an HBO miniseries.”

"Ahhh, I see. That illusion is certainly meant to be true here, too, though me and the other guys...we don't advertise what else we offer, and definitely not openly while we're here. But what you're thinking is likely more true in women-only strip clubs. The standards for women in the field are different, in many cases for their own protection."   
  
He looks at her. "I wonder if you still think so highly of me now that you know the extent of what I do."

She considers a moment.    
  
“You’re a consenting, conscious adult. You do what you have to do.” She shrugs briefly. “Who am I to judge?”

"But is that what you expected?" he asks. "You think I'm more than what people see of me. I think that's not what people expect, but not because I am any more magnanimous or wonderful or whatever."

“I mean, no, it’s not what I expected, but then again I had no idea what to expect when I decided to sneak backstage and accidentally barge in on your shower. It was almost a coin toss.” Her hands twist in her lap. “You’ve given me insight into an industry I know nothing about and how you move through it and I can’t judge you for how you live your life or do your work.”

There's a pause that threatens to make itself awkward and Rey nearly chokes on the silence.

“I’m glad that you don’t hate your job. I wish you didn’t have to empty yourself in order to do it,” she says, her voice quiet even in the silence of the deserted building.   
  
"It's nice to hear someone is interested in what I do and who I am in more than the superficial, tactile kind of way,” he says, smiling half-heartedly and gazing at the floor. “I'm just sorry that there's not much there worth sharing."

Her face softens, her eyes gray in the cold fluorescent light.    
  
“It’s more than enough,” she murmurs. “Thank you for telling me.”

He seems suddenly more distant.    
  
"Well, another satisfied customer. At least someone got their money’s worth tonight."

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Her brow crinkles in confusion.

"It's...nevermind. Sorry. I'm just being dumb."

“No, go on, what were you going to say?”

He shifts uncomfortably and crosses his arms in front of his chest.   
  
"The more acceptable name for the other part of my job is 'escort.' It can mean a bunch of different things. It can mean I escort a woman from her door to her bed and then back, but this time with the other half of our agreed-to payment. In other cases, I get the Boyfriend treatment: the client takes me out to dinner, we talk, I flirt. I make her feel good. We go to a room, I make her feel great. I leave with the rest of my payment and some assurance that I filled two different but equally urgent needs."   
  
He starts pacing.    
  
"I'm wondering...if that's not what this is. And I feel stupid as hell for it. I'm using you to get out shit that I keep bottled up because I need a person to fill a role. Someone to listen. And you're saying such nice and-and...affirming things that it's easy for me to get lost in what you say. But that's not fair to you. Or me."

Rey is quiet for a long while, locks of her damp brown hair hanging over her downturned eyes. She’s taking in the words and trying to form her own over the cacophony of the warring sides in her mind.    
  
“...does it have to be like that?” she mumbles.    
  
She looks up at him, or rather down from vantage point on the stage, her face intent. Everything goes very still.    
  
“Couldn’t we just be two people on the opposite ends of a strange connection? Would it be so impossible to be...friends, maybe? Acquaintances, sounding boards, shoulders to cry on?” She huffs a weak little gust of air. “A smile on the bridge?”   
  
She looks down at her hands, twisting the gray fabric over her fingers.    
  
“Unless you’d rather it be like...like that. I--I wouldn’t mind, I think...because, honestly, I’ve never met anyone like you before and I don’t...” She exhales slowly. “...I don’t want to stop, whatever this is. I...I like talking to you.”

"I like talking to you, too. And I don't want to stop either."    
  
Whatever had compelled him to be honest with her had not hidden in his locker when he got dressed, and he was finding that he could not stop.   
  
He had never wanted to spill his guts to a woman who he had entertained onstage before, and truly, he hadn't thought there was anything special about her the previous night. But since he had first spotted her earlier, it had been like a magnet in the core of himself was drawing him to her. He had felt the need to try to shake her, to give her a show, to get rid of her, as if that would ease this strange attraction to her, but all had failed. The only way he could answer the pull was to tell her more of the things he had kept inside himself for so long.   
  
He walks over to the stage again, his arms braced  against the glittering surface, his hands bracketing her body.   
  
"But...I'm selfish. I'm a person people use. And I use them, too, in my own way. And you're listening to me just talk and talk, and unless you're using this to get yourself off later, I can't help but feel like...I'm using you, too. And I don't want to do that."

His voice, low and rasping, settles in her muscles and warms her very bone marrow. If he’s using her, she doesn’t mind. Not even slightly.    
  
“Well,” she breathes, “is there something I can do to even the playing field? Do you want my secret hurts to hold for a while?”

He exhales, then glances up at her. There's that look again.    
  
She's finally able to give it a name.   
  
Desperation. He was likely as starved for this connection as she was.   
  
"Yes," he says. "Tell me about yourself. Tell me anything."

"What do you want to know?" she whispers.

"Tell me about your friends. The ones who brought you here." 

She snorts, her face breaking out into a fond grin. "You mean my kinky friends who brought good-girl Rey in to corrupt her? They'll be Rose, Jessika, and Kaydel."

He pulls away from her. Too close, too friendly. Too soon.

Rey settles in, crossing her legs under her.    
  
"Rose owns the cafe next door to my shop and Kay and Jess are her roommates. My very first day open, and I hadn't had a single customer all day. I was this close to closing up early so I could go up to my apartment and cry my eyes out, when Rose comes bustling through my door with the best scones you'll ever taste and a hot cup of tea. 'We small business owners have to stick together!' she says, 'And us gals gotta support each other.'"   
  
She smiles fondly. "She bought a vintage necklace from me and I will never go anywhere else for baked goods. We've been best friends ever since."

But too quickly, the smile starts to fade.   
  
"I don't know, I feel like...like I shouldn't feel so lonely. But there are times, even in the middle of a room full of friends, I feel like the only person on the last asteroid floating through empty space. I can't explain it. Not to Rose, not to Kay and Jess...I don't even know if I have the words for it."   
  
She looks down at her hands, twisting in her lap.

He hops up on the stage and sits beside her, close enough to brush the side of her hoodie.   
  
"And why is that, do you think?"

“I...um...”    
  
Her breath leaves her in a long, shaky stream of air. She squeezes her eyes shut.    
  
“I was...abandoned.”    
  
She’s trembling. “I’ve never told anyone that. I—I don’t think I’ve ever even said the words aloud.”   
  
She turns to face him and her eyes are sad and dark green and willfully dry.    
  
“I was abandoned in Covent Garden when I was five. I was sat next to a fountain with a lollie and the promise that they’d come back for me. It took almost four hours for anyone to realize that I’d been left and by then my...my parents had long gone.”

She holds up a shivering hand.    
  
“And before you say it, I don’t want your pity. I don’t want threats that you’ll hunt them down and make them pay for what they did to me. I don’t need them. I don’t want them.”   
  
The hand curls in on itself.    
  
“I do wish I knew why, though. I gave up on ever seeing them again years ago, but that’s the one thing I wish I knew. What did I do that made them leave me.”

He freezes, unsure of how to respond.

Of course, women had a habit of unloading their burdens on him. He didn’t mind that part of the job, and he was very good at nodding along and expressing just the right kind of sympathy for each plight: some want an understanding ear, while some don’t mind the sultry pout and some flirtations exclamation of “Don’t let it get you down, beautiful!”

This was definitely the deepest anyone had ever exposed themselves to him, and yet, despite all that he had seen and done under this roof, he feels this is the first time he had really been deeply unsettled.

He wants to thank her for opening up to him. He wants to give back to her for what she gave of herself. He wants, more than anything, to be genuine, and to have her see it. He doesn’t want her to see this as more flash and glitter and artifice. They were two troubled people for some reason latching on to one another because of an improbable connection formed under the stage lights. But he had laid himself spiritually bare before her, and she had done the same. She had to know it was more. She had to know it came from  _ him. _

"It wasn't your fault,” he whispers. "There's nothing you did. You were a little girl. Your parents — forgive me for saying so—were miserable, selfish, awful people. And that's on my authority as a miserable, selfish person."   
  
He pauses again.   
  
"I'm not sure if I'm saying too much or too little, but...may I hug you?"

She swallows thickly and nods faintly.

He wraps her in his arms, cradling the small woman carefully.    
  
"You're very kind, Rey. You're right. You don't need them. But it's okay to be hurt. It's okay to want to be wanted."   
  
He squeezes her just a little tighter.    
  
"It's okay to seek out affection."

She releases a breath she hadn’t realized had gotten lodged in her ribs. He’s so...warm. Every muscle in her body, tensed and defensive, eases at the pressure around her. She hides her face in his collarbone, the long scar brushing against her cheek, and slowly brings her arms up around his back.    
  
“Is this okay?” she whispers meekly.

"It's perfect," he mumbled into her ear.

She burrows impossibly closer and it hits her that she fits here, in the arms of this man who she knows and doesn’t. She feels safe and content and...cared for. It hadn’t occurred to her until that point, but something in her had needed someone,  _ anyone _ , to give her permission to ask for affection. The weight that it lifts from her heart is dizzying and her eyes prickle at the corners.   
  
“Thank you,” slips from her lips, barely audible and utterly genuine.

He had to resist the urge to kiss her on top of her head. Whether that instinct was professional or personal, he couldn’t decide.   
  
"Thank you for sharing with me."

“Doesn’t feel quite so lonely on this asteroid right now,” she mumbles.    
  
She knows she should let him go, let him get home and get on with his life and move forward. But for the moment, she just wants to stay here, legs cramping and hair mussed and clothes drying unevenly and wrapped up in the unexpected gentleness of Ben Solo.

"And I don't think I'm going to jump off that bridge. Or whatever."

She laughs easily and he can feel her smile against his chest.    
  
“I’m glad, because then I’d have to dive in after you and I’m not gonna lie, I’m a crap swimmer and you’re enormous.”

"Ohhhh yeah, I'd absolutely sink you," he says with a laugh.    
  
He doesn't want to pull away from her, but the panic is setting in. The desire to explore this moment more is tempting, but he is afraid to push it too far.    
  
Physical affection is easy. But he isn’t used to desire like this.

She feels him tense under her cheek.    
  
“Shit, sorry,” she says quickly, extricating herself from the hug with no small modicum of reluctance.

"What? What happened?" he asked, releasing her, as if he was poisonous and the contact could maim her.

“My fault, didn’t mean to get all koala bear on you.”    
  
She laughs it off weakly. Even she isn’t convinced by it. She checks her watch, trying to distract herself from the heat creeping up her face and the horde of butterflies perching in her rib cage.    
  
“Oh my god it’s almost 2. I am so sorry, I should get out of here so you can get home...”

"I guess," he agrees flatly as he separates himself from her. "I've still got some costumes to put away."   
  
He stands on the stage and offers her his hands. "Care for the backstage tour?"

She takes his hands and he lifts her up as if she weighed nothing at all. His palms are smooth but his knuckles are cross hatched with old scars. She can’t bring herself to let go of those hands so easily.    


 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you want to arrange to have strippers at Chuck E. Cheese, though, I know a guy.
> 
> (It's Chuck.)


	4. Chapter 4

“You know, if you keep peeling back the curtains on this place, all the mystique will be gone and I’ll never come back.”

Rey’s smile is small but blinding, somehow easier than it had been minutes before.

"Maybe I don't want you to visit me at work anymore," he says noncommittally, picking up his book bag from the edge of the stage. He wants to see her again, he realizes with a pang in his gut. But the thought of her seeing him performing on this stage again makes him wince.

“Sure you’re not sick of me yet?”

Ben begins walking towards the back of the stage, and then pauses, turning to look back at her. "Even if I were, I still gotta lock up, and since you wouldn't leave the first several times I asked..."  
  
He smirks, scanning her from head to foot. "Though I gotta say, you look pretty good on the stage, girl."

She twirls and pulls a wobbly curtsy, beaming bright as the sun and swimming in his sweatshirt.   
  
“Think I’ve got what it takes to make it in the big time?” she quips.

He laughs. "You gotta wiggle them hips a little more. And maybe skip the hoodie. I mean, if you think you can handle it, more power to you. You’re both braver and more shameless than a lot of people."

He strolls towards her. “If you do choose to travel down my dark path, however, you'd make a killing giving smiles to the men of Vegas. You're certainly making a believer outta me."

“I like your smile,” she says honestly. “The real one.”

"Oh? Which one is that, now?"

“The one that reaches your whole face.”

He looks coyly away.  
  
"I don't think I know that one."

“Don’t play dumb, Benny-boy, yes you do.”

"No,” he replies breathlessly. “Please. Remind me."

She stops her backtracking and stares up at him. There’s not much space between them and when she darts forward briefly to peck a tiny kiss against his jawbone, the chasm separating them is momentarily the world’s easiest distance to cross.   
  
She smiles shyly up at him.

Like a lovesick teenager, his hand involuntarily rises to his cheek in shock, and then, damn her, there's the smile, and he laughs at himself for being such a schoolboy about this.

“That’s the one.”  
  
"Ah, this one?" he asks, beaming at her.

A thought occurs to him again, one that had been needling at the edges of his consciousness throughout the night. Now it came to the forefront.   
  
As a teenager, he had learned that prostitutes don't kiss. He couldn't remember what movie it had been in that he learned this lesson, but it had been rather uncomfortable to watch a sex scene with his uncle on the couch next to him. He quickly became absorbed in the details of the scene, looking at every area of the frame except the exposed skin of the lovers the shot was based around. But when he asked his Uncle Luke why the couple onscreen hadn't kissed, he had been given a blunt answer.   
  
"Whores don't kiss, Ben."   
  
And that was that. He didn't need to ask further questions; he knew girls like romance, and that being paid for sex meant that kisses, which were romantic, were precious, too valuable to give away like a cheeseburger through a drive-through window. Or so his teenage brain had rationalized, based on what little he knew of women from movies and TV.   
  
And then he'd been asked to be an escort. He hadn't been fully surprised; the guys had suggested that he consider it as a career possibility, as a little bit of money on the side when things were slow at Starkiller. And he'd remembered the rule he learned from the movie, and determined that he would not kiss. He found his first client was very easy. A slightly older business woman had kept things simple and just had him over with no illusions of wanting anything other than his body. When he had almost brought to the edge of climax several times, that maybe there was no harm in it.   
  
So he'd kissed her on the lips, like a lover for rent. And she’d moaned desperately into his mouth, the pain of her wanting seeming to melt into his touch. And she came soon after.   
  
So he began to take more escort jobs, and he kissed every woman who wanted to be kissed.   
  
And he had never felt bad about it.   
  
If it was the one thing he could give them that made them feel real, wanted, loved, then they had gotten what they had hired him for. He had taken a job and made it into a service. And it didn’t hurt him any; he enjoyed it for what it was. He knew it wasn’t real, but it was fun for both of them.   
  
And now he looks at Rey, and he feels something strange.   
  
He wants to kiss her. But he’s scared.

He wants her to know it is real.

Her laugh bubbles up, high and giddy, and her cheeks blaze and she hides her face in her hands.  
  
“I am so sorry, that was ridiculously forward of me,” she babbles nervously.   
  
His cheek had been smooth, the skin soft with just the barest prickle of stubble. And even though the kiss had been barely more than a brush of lips, Rey had felt a spark between his skin and hers.

He drops his hand and leans forward to meet her gaze.   
  
"No, that's alright. That was nice. Better than any tip you could have given me." He laughs at himself. Why was he so desperately to remind her what he was? _What was wrong with him?_

"Thank you.”

She peeks through her fingers up at him.   
  
“You’re welcome,” she murmurs.

He cocks his head at her. In the harsh fluorescent lights he could see a bit of color rising in her cheeks.  
  
"No need to be shy with me, sweetheart. Really. I don’t mind if you don’t."

“Why do you keep calling me sweetheart?”

"Habit," he mutters. "Did I do something wrong?"

“No! No, it’s just...no one’s ever really called me that before.”

"I can stop if you'd like."  
  
_You won't_ , he chides himself.

“No, really, it doesn’t bother me at all,” she says quickly.   
  
_Exact opposite of bother, in fact_ , cackles the rebellious side of her brain.

He's torn. He wants to send her away, to spare himself any further humiliation, but he doesn't want her to go. He could lead her on the tour while he cleans, but that means distracting himself from her.  
  
He wants to kiss her back, and the thought makes him dizzy with want, but he can't. Not here. Not on the stage, where he kisses women everywhere but the lips  for laughs, cheers, and tips.   
  
_Whores don't kiss, Ben._

The words echo in his mind, cutting deep into his core.

_Whores don't kiss._

Is that how she saw him?

She wouldn’t have spoken to him if that’s all she thought of him.  
  
He wants her to see him.   
  
"Should we...uh..."   
  
He gestures towards the back of the stage.

“Oh! Yeah! Right...” she stutters. “Shit, I’m sorry I keep distracting you. Please tell me I can do something to help this time? So you can get home sooner.”

His heart lurches at that. That's the last thing he wants. He turns back to face her.  
  
"I really don't want you to help with this part, to be honest. This is where I have to clean up all my sweaty, discarded costume pieces. Really, I like you. Please don't."

She giggles to hide the butterfly that’s escaped its cage in her belly. He likes her?   
  
“What a gentleman.”

“You won’t be saying that in a moment,” he says, leading her through the dark wings into the cluttered, dimly-lit backstage.

“Good lord...I’ve seen a lot of junk hoards in my day, but this is truly impressive,” she wheezes. “I don’t know why I was expecting the back of a male strip club to look like less of a bachelor pad, but obviously I was wrong.”

"Most of us are mostly straight bachelors," he says, tossing his book bag down in a corner. "All of us are slobs."

“‘Mostly straight.’ Remind me again where that falls on the Kinsey scale?”

"Don't know, where would you classify 'gay for pay'?"

“Different scale, then,” she snorts.   
  
It was so...easy to talk to him. The jokes, the flirting, the openness and genuine honesty. It was all just easy.   
  
She perches herself atop a clear surface, a box of some kind, as Ben drops his book bag and gets to work.   
  
“What the fuck, guys?” he mutters to the ghosts of his coworkers, who left this place in a graceless hurry, a mess for him to clean on his own as punishment.

He turns back to Rey, picking up what looks like a pair of chaps. “Oh, Armie would absolutely _shit_ if he saw how they left this place.”

She chuckles, falling into a quiet smile that warms her face and makes the room feel a little brighter.

He scoops up discarded pieces of a variety of costumes, many she had never seen him or his coworkers wear. He throws some pieces into garment bags; others are tossed haphazardly into laundry hampers. She watches absently, trying to follow any discernible path of logic. The back room is littered with shreds and scraps of different men. Characters as easily shed as snake skin, masks for the benefit of others that only expose more of the wearer. It had never really occurred to Rey that being naked could be more of a mask than any piece of clothing.

A muted flash of black leather passes through Ben’s hands.

 _And there’s a bit of Kylo Ren, a whole persona reduced to nothing more than a piece of dirty laundry._ Did Ben Solo feel that way too, at times? Used up and thrown out and waiting to feel clean?   
  
“I hope I’m not boring you.”

“Hm? Oh, no, not a bit,” she says softly. “I’ve never really believed in the concept of the awkward silence.”

“That’s reassuring. Given that I’m the cause for a lot of them of them.” He picks up a pair of large black tennis shoes and puts them in a labeled cubby along the wall..

“I think you’re exaggerating, but okay.” She shifts on her seat, thinking.

"You said you’ve seen a lot of junk heaps. How did you get into antiques, anyway? I thought that was like, a rich old biddie career."

She scoffs, “Oh! Right charmer you are.” Then she stops. “You’re going to laugh.”

"Well, I'll try not to."

“So my place is called Scavengers’ Outpost, right? Well, when I was about 10, my foster placement at the time was this older couple, honestly couldn’t be bothered with me. But they ran this junkyard and that was where I played. Rooting around through old rubbish to find the salvageable bits for resale at this guy Plutt’s pawn shop. Every week I’d go into the shop with my bag full of old shit that I’d cleaned up and restored and every time I came in he’d say, ‘Well if it isn’t the little scavenger! What have you got for me today?’”

She snorts derisively.

“Asshole usually undersold me, but he didn’t ask questions and after a while I got good at haggling. And I did that for years. Saving up little bits and pieces so I could get away.”  
  
She gestures broadly.   
  
“And now here I am, in America, running my own junk shop. Scavenger through and through.”

"Living the dream." He nods. "I'm impressed. Really, that’s amazing, Rey. More than I can do. And I had a bunch of leg-ups in the world."

“Oh yeah?”

"Important parents, big name family. Still an incredible fuck up.”

“Maybe, but it’s good that you’re still trying,” she replies simply. “It’ll work out.”

"I'm glad you think so," he says with a sigh. "This would all make for a funny story if it weren't my current reality.”

“Comedy is misery plus time, mate.”

"Oh boy, then I can't wait to see how many centuries pass until this is a comedy goldmine."

She snorts, then lets her face and voice soften. “What’s something in your life that makes you happy? Like today, this week. What’s something that’s made you smile.”

“Hmmm…” he thinks, picking up discarded camo pants from an earlier group number and examining them. “Not telling.”

“Seriously?” she says, incredulous. “After everything else you’ve told me?”

“Yes, I’m serious. Am I not entitled to few secrets?”

“Nope, I’m your therapist tonight. So spill the beans, Buttcheeks McGee.”  
  
He freezes, then busts out laughing. “Where the hell did that come from?”

She snorts. “Maybe that weak-ass vodka cranberry has finally kicked in.”  
  
He turns around and places a hand on each of his hips, giving her a good view of his fully clothed rear. “I’d be insecure about them after that quip, but my ass is perfect, so thanks, I guess, for feeding my vanity?”

She gives a sardonic nod and chuckles, “Happy to oblige.”

He slaps his own ass cheeks through his sweatpants, shooting her a triumphant smile over his shoulder. “As am I.”

He smugly turns away. “Maybe I’ll tell you later. I’ll think about it.”

He bends over (perhaps more flirtatiously than he was willing to admit) and scoops up a discarded sailor’s uniform.

He hates cleaning. He knows no matter what he does, Armie will flip at the state of the dressing room the next day, but it’s not entirely his responsibility. He doesn't want to spend any more time at work than he has to, but he can't bring himself to send the girl away. He is tempted to fall to the ground and clutch her knees to keep her here.

“I gotta know, though: you’ve been here two nights in a row. Is any of this doing _anything_ for you?”

“What, the costumes?” She waffles a bit on her seat. “I mean you said it yourself, I’m a good girl with kinky friends. This kind of place isn’t usually my speed. But I can see why people are into it. And don’t get me wrong, I had a great time last night. It’s just not the first thing I go for if I…” She flushes. “...feel the itch.”  
  
“Oh?” He halts, turning back to her from an overflowing laundry hamper. “If this doesn’t do it for you—and don’t get me wrong, it’s definitely an experience, and certainly a particular taste—but what, can I ask, does?”

She groans and tries to hide in the hood of warm fleece. “No, trust me it’s embarrassing, and not even close to sexy, so you really don’t want to know,” she whines from inside the sweatshirt.

“This, coming from the cucumber girl?” he asks incredulously, then pauses. “Wait, no, that makes sense, actually.”

He strolls over to her, chuckling at the way she has buried herself in his too-large sweatshirt like an overgrown hedgehog.

“I don’t want to make you uncomfortable, but now...now I gotta know.” He smirks. “If you would be so kind as to indulge me while I work. Because you know, you owe me and all that.”

She squirms, peeking out from a cave of gray cotton, her cheeks on fire. But his face is so open and earnest and, damn him, she can’t stop herself. She sighs, defeated.

“So you know those paperbacks that you can get for, like, a fiver at the supermarket? The ones with the heroines swooning into the arms of some swashbuckling yet sensitive member of the aristocracy on the cover?” She pauses, waiting for a response.

He puts his hands on his hips. “...Fabio? We’re talking Fabio?”

“Okay, but let’s be real, Fabio hasn’t been on a romance novel cover since the 90s…” She trails off at his amused expression. “...fuck you. Yeah, Fabio.”

He smiles broadly. “So like, the Harlequin romances, with the...the...dukes, or whatever? The bodice-rippers?”

Rey hides her face in her hands. “...yeah,” she wails.

He laughs boisterously, then turns around and scurries away. “Hold on, hold on.”

He rustles through the hangers on a rack, metal scraping against metal as the scoured the costumes.

“Stop making fun of me and my shitty taste in erotica, you jerk!” She’s trying not to laugh, but she feels light despite her embarrassment and she can’t help the little chuckle that escapes as she rails against him. “You wear tearaway suits for a living! You don’t get to judge!”

He pops his head up over the rack.

“Me? Make fun of literally anyone for their kinks? Please.”

The ruffling halts for a moment.

“I’m honestly offended that you thought I would judge you for enjoying paperback romances. I mean, really. Me. Judge _you_ for your kinks.”

She rolls her eyes. “Oh come on, there’s no way that’s a kink. It’s way too basic to be kinky. Isn’t kink like...I don’t know, whips and butt plugs or something?”

“I mean, do you get off to it?” he calls, his head having disappeared into some dark corner of the backstage changing area.

“I...I guess? I mean it’s not always a case of ‘book in one hand, vibrator in the other’ or anything…” Her face flames at the intimate detail she’d so easily let slip to a perfect stranger.

“Hot,” his disembodied voice chimes in.

Her eyes roll hard enough to make her see spots. “But sometimes...it’s just enough to...y’know...scratch the itch.”

“I mean, it seems like you’ve got some genres, and those are kind of kinks. And that’s absolutely oh-kay. Really. Stripper-slash-escort here. I’ve seen weirder. Done weirder. Don’t need to defend to me. I’m just...genuinely curious about what rings your bells, since buff dudes shaking their asses to music doesn’t do it.”

She laughs. “Absolutely nothing shocks you anymore, does it? If I had told you that the only way I could get off was to taze my nipples while I sang God Save the Queen, you wouldn’t even bat an eyelash!”

“No, but I’d buy you a drink and ask for the more salacious details.”

Her laugh turns into a cackle and tears prick at the corners of her eyes. “What the hell are you doing back there, anyway?”

“Work stuff. Almost done.” He shouts, his dark hair momentarily appearing behind a vanity mirror before disappearing again into the shadow.

“So about these books...do you read the kind that actually has sex, or is it just virginal hand-holding and stolen promises of love Victorian-romance kind of thing?”

“Oh no, if they don’t have a wee bairn in the cradle by the end, it wasn’t worth reading,” she calls back.

“So...sexy, scandalous out-of-wedlock banging? Gorgeous lords and swashbucklers deflowering fair maidens?”

“And rogues with tender hearts rescuing the lady fair from their arranged marriages. Pirate kings, highwaymen, and more viscounts than reasonably exist within the British Commonwealth. But none of the contemporary stuff. Completely implausible.”

“You’re right. Contemporary romance is completely boring. Hence we’re both single.”

“Hey now, I never said boring. I said ‘implausible.’ The actor sweeping the poor waitress off her feet at the old drive-in, the handsome young construction worker wooing the sexy secretary, the rodeo cowboy and his ER nurse, it’s not real life!” she rants.

“No? You don’t think there’s romance in day-to-day life?”

“Of course there is, but...but I think it’s not the grand gestures, you know? God the contemporaries are just dripping with them.” Her voice softens a bit and she smiles thoughtfully. “No, the day-to-day romance is in the small things, the quiet moments.” She chuffs a laugh. “The kind of stuff that doesn’t usually make for titillating smut.”

Rey stretches up to try to peer over the garment rack.

“And I resent the immediate assumption that I am not happily attached to some guy out in the real world!”

He leans up to meet her gaze, his shoulders hidden by the rack.

“I resent the fact you’re implying this _isn’t_ the real world.”

“But it isn’t real, is it,” she says plainly, unaccusing. She gestures widely to the backstage area. “All this? Kylo Ren? It’s all a fantasy.”

It’s something that has been present in the back of her mind since she walked in the door. The impermanent, dream-like nature of the place. Backstage is littered with shreds of those dreams, and the only thing the patrons get to take home are flushed cheeks, raunchy stories, and memories that will fade eventually.

“All of it,” she continues, “except you.”

Her eyes hold his, dark in the half-light.

“You’re probably the only real thing in this whole joint.”

He freezes for a second. The artifice is easy to forget when he is lost in conversation with her. He knows where he is, yes; it’s never far off from his mind. But every word they had exchanged had been so potent and genuine that the glittering stage and gaudy costumes, even the walls around them had melted away, and the world had reformed between them, authentic and beautiful and desirable.. And then she catches his stare. And he remembers where and who he is.

“True,” he says softly. “Very true. But you know everyone who comes in here? They’re real, too. It’s easy to forget on both sides. But you’re pretty real. And I hope everything you said was real. Because everything I said…” He’s surprised to find himself defending the world he had grown so tired of, but he can’t help himself. He feels things slipping out now, things he’s not ready to say. He waves away his words before ducking down again to pull on a pair of shoes.

“Nevermind. Let me just say this: I know I don’t work in the most morally respectable field. I’m not like, a teacher or nurse or librarian or whatever. But I can’t imagine your friends would want to bring you here and subject you to our...unique brand of eroticism unless you’re either in a very secure relationship, or none at all. Though _you_ might be the kind of girl to come back here to check on me, I can’t imagine many others would. Unless you’ve bamboozled me this whole time and you’re actually one of those girls on Tinder looking for a third…”

“Yeah, nothing to worry about there,” she says bemusedly. “Kind of need a second if you’re looking for a third.”

“A-ha, see? No need for indignation just because I’m right. And I’m right about a lot of things right now.”

“Oh yeah? Like what.”

“Grand gestures still happen; they happen a lot! And they’re still great. And I’ll prove it.”

She chuckles. “Yeah? Alright, prove it, Mr. Romance.”

He takes a deep breath to compose himself and strolls out from behind the costume rack wearing a loose, flowing, low-cut shirt, tight pants, and tall black leather boots, a costume from fetish nights past, one of the ones the guys usually begged Armie to bring back into the regular rotation. Striking a pose, he turns a smirk on her.

“What do you think: viscount or pirate king?”

She gapes, stunned beyond reasonable belief. With the hair and the clothes and the scar and the sultry look in his eye, he looks exactly like he’s stepped off the cover of _Sonata for a Scoundrel._ And she’s honestly touched by the effort.

“I think this is probably the craziest thing I’ve ever experienced in my life,” she breathes with a growing grin. “But definitely leaning toward pirate king.”

He bursts out laughing, at himself, but also at her exuberance. It had been a stupid plan, digging this thing out just to see her reaction. It was absolutely worth it.

“Good, pirate kings are cooler anyway,” he says strolling over to her slowly, careful of the tight pants strangling his legs.

She eyes him up appreciatively.

“Way cooler,” she chuckles. “You found my fantasy, it would seem.”

“Right off the cover, huh?” he says, spinning around to show her the whole look, starring his infamous buttcheeks.

“All you need is a buxom young damsel in a half-buttoned petticoat and you’re set.”

He looks at his reflection in one of the vanity mirrors and cocks his head. He did look the part of the historical romance hero. And, he realizes slowly, part of him wishes he could be, if only to be desirable to her.

“Are you volunteering?”

Her heart stutters and a sharp little pulse of heat tumbles down her spine.

He extends his arm towards her. Entranced, she reaches out and slips her hand into his, calloused and warm, and allows him to pull her to her feet. He invites her to come closer, pulling her into him, and slipping a hand around her waist.

“Now you put your hands...here,” he mutters, lifting her wrist so her palms rest against his chest on either side of the shirt’s deep opening.

She melts into him unconsciously, her hands burning from the heat of his chest through the thin fabric. She can’t take her eyes off of his face, the dark look directed down at her and the errant wave of black hair flopping over one eye. She tentatively reaches up to push the lock out of the way and the butterflies in her stomach go wild. This...this was exactly like her wildest fantasy. How many times had she imagined herself in the place of that lovely young lady on the cover? How many daydreams and imaginings had she concocted around this precise tableau?

Rey vaguely casts a glance back at their reflection and it jolts something in her.

She...she looks achingly ordinary. Utterly unremarkable. No petticoats, no corset, no silk ribbons fluttering through curls of chocolate hair. That was a costume and an unconvincing one at that. _He_ looks the part. Completely. Perfectly. But he feels so solid under her hands. She can feel him breathing into her palms, feel his own hands around her waist through the thick fleece of a borrowed sweatshirt.

“Is this real?” she whispers to herself.

His eyes follow her hand eagerly as it reaches for him, and then retreats just as quickly. He catches her glance in the mirror across from them, and just as he had seen her brighten when he had put the costume on, she seems to have wilted, sinking into herself.

He was a cad. It wasn’t a thong, but it was still another shitty, smelly costume to disguise the undesirable person wearing it. A fragile, horrible shell to for Ben to hide in. He had more than he could take of those. He bets she did, too.

He wanted to be wearing his sweatpants again and making her laugh. He didn’t want this.

He loosens his grip on her waist, and shakes his head, casting his hair back into his face.

“It’s like you said before, sweetheart. This isn’t the real world.”

She exhales a steady breath and looks back up at him with a kind smile.

“That’s alright,” she murmurs, patting his chest gently.

“Thank you for the gesture, Ben. Truly. It was lovely.”

“My pleasure,” he mutters, releasing her as he feels her weight sinking back away from him.

She extricates herself slowly from his embrace and steps back, smoothing her hair back from her warm face and seating herself once again on her box. She beams another hundred watt smile up at him.

“Now, I really need to stop distracting you so you can get home,” she says, her voice firm but gentle.

“And I need to get out of these pants. They’re not tearaway, but they’re also not my size, so if they start to rip open...run,” he says, flashing he a faint smile he hopes is warm and not showing his displeasure at parting from her. He remembers her lips against his jaw and he almost turns red at the thought. He was being stupid. He’d probably undone all the progress he’d made with her with that one dumb stunt.

She’d thought he was real, and he’d decided to wear an artifice.

She giggles, “You have my condolences and my appreciation for the dedication to the illusion, but I am not helping to peel you out of them. I don’t know if I’d ever recover from that one, Ben.”

“Oh, ouch.”

It really had been a sweet thought. She weakly chides herself for reacting so strangely in the moment. But perhaps the fantasy had changed...maybe she wasn’t looking for that dashing hero anymore.

As hastily as he can manage, he pulls off the offending costume, shoving them onto hangers with perhaps too much force and jamming them onto the costume racks while slipping into his sweats and sneakers.

“Is there anything else that needs to be cleaned up?” she calls after a few silent moments.

He turns a light off over the vanities. “I think we're almost done here, but I have to do one last walk-through of the staff areas.”

“Alright, should I wait out front or come back with you?”

“If I'm giving you the backstage tour, weird stained thongs and all, you get to leave out the staff door.”

She presses her hands to her heart. “What an honor. I’m touched.”

“As well you should be. Usually the customers who come back here leave with security on their tail.” He shoulders his book bag one final time and heads towards the doorway. As he gets further and further away from her, something in his chest seems to protest. He wants to stay in her orbit. He hates getting too far.

She hops down from her perch and follows him through the tight clutter of the backstage area and back out into the hallway. It’s dark and the exit sign above the door at the end of the corridor casts a halo of lurid red light around Ben’s head and shoulders.

 _A good angel with bad wings_ , she thinks.

She leans up against the cinderblock wall while he retreats into the locker room and pulls out her phone from the mercifully dry interior of her bag. The time blazes accusingly from the top of the screen and an hour-old text from Rose wishes her good night with a number of kiss-face emojis. She smiles and tucks the device away, tilting her head back against the cold concrete.

This night had been utterly surreal. The kind of turn of events that never happens to real people, yet it happened to her. Rey doesn’t entirely know what to make of it all, but she does know one thing for certain: she can’t let this be the end of it. Brief and bizarre though it is, she can’t let Ben disappear into the stage lights again.

He picks up his towel, tossing it into yet another laundry basket. He goes into the supply cabinet and gets some cleaning spray, and spritzes the air. He doubts anyone is going to remember his story in the morning, and at this point, he doesn’t care. He didn’t even go to the office to collect the rest of his earnings. He’d get them when he was back in, nice and early for a wild Tuesday evening.

 _But she won’t be here_ , he thinks bitterly.

For as much as he dreaded facing her at the end of his number, the dread of letting her go without any sort of plan to see her again was far worse.

He switches off the lights in the locker room, and he strolls out.

“Ready?”

_No._

“Ready as I’ll ever be.”

Her words were loaded. He hadn’t been in the field this long without picking that up.  
  
“Is there something else you’d like to see?” he asks, afraid to press her further.

Her answering laugh is weak and hollow.

“The backside of this building and the starry sky above me,” she says with a smirk, but the mirth in her words doesn’t meet her eyes.

“Oh.” He pauses, then leans forward. “Hey, you...alright? Did I say something weird?”

The exit is only a few feet away. But he is closer than the way out, and illuminated by the red light above them, painting the long waves of his black hair like fresh-spilled blood and turning his eyes impossibly darker and liquid, he looks like temptation. He looks like someone she could fall for.

But is it real?

She exhales a breathy laugh and looks down, unable to meet his scrutiny.

“Yeah...yeah I’m fine,” she says quietly. “Let’s get out of here, yeah?”

He reaches a tentative hand towards her, then thinks better of it. He wants to hold her in place, pin her to his side. Make sure neither of them ever has to feel alone again. Having someone else believe in you is a powerful high.  
  
“Is that really...are you...are you sure?” he stammers.

The air goes out of the building and sticks in her lungs. The swarm of butterflies in her gut stills and she can feel her heartbeat in her fingertips, trying to escape out to him. She meets his gaze.

“...no, I’m not sure,” she whispers, barely audible in the crushing silence.

This time, he places his hand carefully on her lower back, ushering her towards the door.  
  
“Let’s get you outside. I’ll set the alarm and meet you out there.”

His hand, warm and blazing through his sweatshirt and her t-shirt and her skin and her muscles, seems to shock the sudden stillness within her back into wild, furious life. Before she realizes it entirely, she is outside in the fresh, cool night air. The stars blink above her and the Vegas lights turn the sky yellow in the distance. She misses his hand against her back the second he pulls away, and that harp-string he had tied to her the night before thrums. She stands, stock-still and gasping quietly for breath, and waits.

He almost enters the alarm code in a third time before he catches himself and gets it right. The alarm beeps in warning to exit, and he hits the final light switch before heading outside.  
  
He stands next to her for a moment, unsure of what to say.   
  
_Awkward silence,_ he thinks to himself.

She feels him approach and her heart aches. Endings are inevitable. This surreal, beautiful, impossible kind of connection doesn’t happen often, but it is fragile. Was it the kind of connection that could survive this goodbye?

“Shit, your sweatshirt…” she realizes, reluctantly slipping out of it. She holds it in her hands probably a bit longer than necessary before offering it back to him. “Thanks again, for letting me use it.”

“I’m sorry you needed it,” he says with a weak laugh. He isn’t sorry. Not anymore, anyway. “You alright getting home? I don’t want you on the road by yourself if you’re not up to it. It’s getting late.”

He kind of hoped he could give her a ride. Or wait for a ride with her. Anything at all to prolong this moment. He feels a distance growing between them. Had any of this been real? Moments before he was almost sure there was something there. The kiss on his jaw still seemed to sear into his core. It seemed real. It could have been. He could mean something to her.

Is that really what he wanted?  
  
_Yes, absolutely._   
  
But away from here. With enough distance behind them that she could forget his stage name. Forget the horrible stench that lingered in the club.

Think of only _him_. The real him that he had tried to show her, that he had finally relented and revealed to her.

But there he was fantasizing again.

“Yeah, I drove. I don’t live too far, so no worries. I’m...I’m wide awake,” she says brightly.

She doesn’t make to move away, back to the parking lot in front of the little building. A lone car wheezes past on the empty highway, the barest flash of headlights mixing with the emergency lights on the back of the club. She doesn’t want to join that person on the dark, open road. Not yet. She keeps her eyes tilted up to the smoky, starry sky.

“You know, you never told me what makes you happy,” she murmurs. “I have a life of woes to remember you by, but I don’t know what makes you happy.”

She glances back over at him. “It’s not a fair picture of you. How else am I supposed to get you right?”

He thinks for a moment.

“What makes me happy? I wish I had an answer for that. I guess MMA, but not the whole world of it, all the bells and whistles and sponsorships and crap. That makes me feel like more of a prostitute than anything I do in there. I like MMA, because when I was younger, I was picked on, so I started wrestling. And when I was wrestling, I didn’t care what people thought. I only cared about doing my best. And I got really good at it. So I started studying martial arts with my uncle. And then MMA came from there. I just like that feeling of focus. Of being in the moment, just in control of your body and, if you’re good, your opponent’s body, and that’s all you can hope to control. I love that feeling. I miss that. And maybe I’ll be able to do that soon. I just gotta see what the doctor says.”

He looks at her. She seems distant, away on a lonely asteroid in deep space. He knows physical intimacy. He parodies it, markets it, sells it straight. And then there’s her. And she’s too precious to touch.  
  
“There are two things that made me smile this week,” he says softly. “There’s a little kitten I’ve taken in. I think she’s a girl. Either way, she’s the sweetest little thing. I sneak her into my apartment and she curls up on my shoes to go to sleep.”   
  
He looks ahead at the city lights in the distance.   
  
“And then there’s this customer...she followed me back stage and told me I was worth something, then gave me a kiss on the cheek, and I really liked that.”

She freezes and she thinks that if she speaks now, every last word will come out a butterfly.

So instead, she edges her arm out to the side, until the back of her hand just barely brushes his, and he can feel her heartbeat through her fingertips.

He reaches out his fingers and curls his hand around hers, cradling it, as if it were a small, fragile thing. His heart is hammering again. He knows he’s forgetting to breathe, but he’s afraid to, lest he shatter this dream into a million particles of dust that get lost in the desert.

“Ben...is this real?” she whispers. “Because, god, I want this to be real.”

“I want it, too.” He squeezes her hand. He remembers to inhale. “Please, tell me it is to you.”

“Yes. _Yes._ ”

He looks down at her. “Then this is it.”  
  
He pulls their hands up to his face and kisses her knuckles.   
  
“I like not having to pretend.”

She turns to face him fully and shakes her head emphatically. “You don’t have to. Not with me.”

Tentatively, she reaches up to trace the line of his jaw with her fingers.

“So should I or shouldn’t I expect to see you sitting in the back with a shitty drink every night now?”

She smiles, radiant and open.

“Depends.” She steps fractionally closer. “Do you want me?”

“Do I want to see you? Yes, absolutely,” he murmurs, tilting his head into her touch. “Do I want you to see me?”  
  
He hesitates. He thinks of the club behind him.

“I don’t know if I want you to see that.”

“That wasn’t what I asked.” Closer.

“I want that, yes. More than anything.”

“Then what are you going to do about it,” she says, her voice as soft as honey.

“Not fuck it up, I hope.” He pulls her in closer to him, crossing the last gap between them, and kisses her softly, without any demands or certainty. He kisses her freely. He kisses her, not out of any professional obligation, but because he wants to this time.

She melts into him, her hands coming up to touch his face, and returns the caress with sweet pressure and complete acceptance. Her insides sing and the world around them is quiet.

She pulls back reluctantly and smiles up at him.

“Not going to lie, I was hoping you’d do that.”

“Didn’t want you to think I was being professional or anything.” He beams. “I wanted you to be sure I was off the clock.”

She laughs and kisses him again, pulling him down to her level.

“Fuck professionalism,” she presses into his lips.

He places his hands on her sides. He wants to be tender. He wants to be different.

“But I am nothing if not a fucking professional,” he laughs when they part to catch their breaths.

Rey leans back to look at him, eyes sparkling and cheeks flushed and lips thoroughly kissed. Her hands alight on his arms and she can’t imagine parting from him now. Not after this.

“So what happens now?” she asks.

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a very sex-positive story. Enjoy your kinks. Don't shame others for their kinks.
> 
> Also, Fabio was hot once, okay? Just like. Respect the classics.


	5. Chapter 5

Maz’s Place is mostly empty on any given Sunday night, but it’s pretty late. Rey sits at the bar, nursing a vodka cranberry and absently flipping through her emails on her phone. A few notices for local estate sales; another reply from a particularly finicky buyer whose “interest in fairness” regarding the pricing on a piece of mid-century modern glassware was starting to border on scammy; Macy’s coupon; Michaels coupon; junk mail that didn’t pertain to any junk she sells; a new recipe from Rose. The drunk at the other end of the bar has probably fallen asleep into his beer. The television above the bar flashes from an episode of Law and Order: SVU to commercials.

“You need another one, Rey-child?” asks the diminutive African woman behind the counter.

“No thanks, Maz,” Rey replies with a small smile as she looks up from her inbox. “Gotta open early tomorrow morning.”

“Alright, chere, just let me know if you need anything.”

“Thanks.”

She looks up at the monitor just as the ad changes to one for a new pay-per-view fight that Friday. 

A handsome Guatemalan with frankly exceptional hair grins a perfectly white, utterly cocky smile into the camera and winks. He’s the champ, the golden boy, the easy bet. Undefeated and angling for another title. There are shots of him in a suit, in the ring. The camera itself seems to be cheering him on, and why not? He’s got the energy, the charisma. He oozes victory.

His opponent, however. Dark haired, dark-eyed. In some shots, he’s snarling, full of rage and righteous fury as he descends on his opponent with a flurry of fists and feet. In others, he’s eerily quiet. Calm; calm in the way that the ocean’s surface can be still while there are monsters lurking in the deep. That is the look that makes grown men, seasoned fighters, turn to jello in the ring. There are a few shots of him in a black suit with his powerful arms crossed over his chest. He is a threatening, commanding presence. 

Rey grins and turns back to her phone and shoots off a quick text.

_ Saw you on telly at Maz’s.  _

It’s a minute before the response comes. Her eyes never leave the screen.

_ Yeah? I was watching it, too. _

_ Haha, wacky coincidence. _

Her phone pings again a moment later, and she reads off a series of messages sent with haste.

_ Yeah, it’s funny.  _

_ There’s a cute girl watching it in front of me _

_ She is so absorbed in her phone. _

_ She has no idea I’m over her shoulder. _

“Hey sweetheart.”

She jumps and turns just in time for Ben to steal a kiss.

“Ooh, you cheeky bastard!” she growls playfully once he’s pulled away, wapping him lightly on the shoulder as he laughs. 

He drapes his arms over her shoulders, pulling her in tight against him and pressing a kiss to her temple. “As always. How’d I look? Tough? Threatening?”

She shrugs nonchalantly. “I dunno, I think I could take you.”

He narrows his eyes and looks across the bar carefully. “Did you already pay your tab?”

“Mm-hm, all paid up, just catching up on my emails.”   
  
“Oh, how lovely.” In a few swift movements, he sweeps her off the seat and throws her over his shoulder. “I’m taking  _ you _ , then.”

“OI!” she squawks. She looks pleadingly back at the bar. “Maz, give us a hand?”

The barkeep looks up from the glass she was polishing. 

“Chere, it’s not my fault you can’t control your man,” she says with a twinkle in her eye. “Mind her head, Ben.”

“See you soon, Maz,” he says demurely, scooping up Rey’s purse and jacket before storming once more out of the bar, his girlfriend slung over his shoulder.

Rey grumbles and goes limp in his grasp. “You’re incorrigible.”

Once he arrives at her car, he places her down on her feet delicately. She bats harmlessly again at his chest, trying to suppress a smile up at him. His hands are linked together at the small of her back and his thumbs trace parallel lines along the divot of her spine, instantly releasing the tension she had forgotten she was holding there. It’s just so easy to melt into his arms like this.

“You shouldn’t be pulling stunts like that before a match,” she chides. “You’ve worked too damn hard to get back in the ring only to be taken out again because you decided to play Tarzan and Jane with your girlfriend.”

“Hey, I've worked hard enough this week that I deserve a little playtime,” he mumbles into her neck as he plants a few kisses on her.

She hums contentedly.    
  
“This had better not be a last meal situation,” she says breathily. “Because if you’re going to spend the rest of the week fucking me like it’s your last night on earth, you’re just going to have to keep trying to outdo yourself after you win and that can’t be good for you.”   
  
Even so, she lets her head fall back to give him better access to the tender skin of her throat.

"Are you telling me you don't want me to fuck you like I'm on death row?" he growls. "Because it worked pretty well last time."

“You’re damn right it did,” she sighs. “And now you’re going to try to top that.”   
  
She nips teasingly at his earlobe. “Honestly I don’t know what’s better; you fucking me before the match, or you fucking me after you’ve won the match.”

He trails his mouth down to the collar of her shirt.   
  
"Well, we're going to find out soon, aren't we?"    
  
He grins devilishly up at her.    
  
"Now, are you good to drive? I Ubered here, but I can get us back if need be.”

“I’m absolutely smashing, thank you,” she hums through a smile.    
  
He straightens before strolling over to the passenger side door. "Alright, no funny business while you're driving, then. You’ll have to keep your hands off me and focus on the road."

She rolls her eyes. “And will I be afforded the same privilege?”

He opens the door, considering her offer.

"Negotiable."

“Not negotiable! I can’t very well drive in a straight line if you’ve got your hand halfway down my knickers.”

"Then don't wear knickers. What do you want me to tell you?"

“You will keep your hands to yourself, Ben Solo, or you can walk home!” she cackles.

"Oh, my hands are all mine until we cross through the front door," he says buckling himself in and placing his palms on his knees. "THEN, I'm going to find my kitty and give her a hug.  _ THEN _ . Then you're going to wish you'd forgotten knickers today because I am tearing them off of you so fast..."

“Oh such pretty promises, love."

Rey’s vintage VW Bug judders to life and she smiles softly as she reaches for Ben’s hand where it sits on his knee, lacing their fingers together. 

He kisses her fingers, content. Everything else would come in time, and Rey was always unflinchingly eager to help with his pre-fight adrenaline rushes, stresses, and minor crises. But for now, he loves nothing more than the comfortable stillness between them.

“Ask me a question,” she says quietly after a few minutes.

"Hmm..." He massages the back her hand with his thumb while he thinks. "Hardest part of living with me. Be honest. I will only cry for a few hours."

She chuckles. “Hair in the shower drain and bleeding everywhere.”   
  
Then she pauses and really thinks about it.    
  
“I hated that first fight after you moved in. The one in Madison Square Garden against Asty. God, I was sobbing, watching you take hit after hit. I don’t know if you remember, you were pretty out of it after Finn brought you home.” She squeezes his hand a bit tighter, her eyes flicking briefly between him and the road. “But you looked so happy, grinning like Christmas morning even with that shiner, and I knew that this was everything that you’d been working towards for so long. And I was so proud of you. I still am proud of you.”

"Yeah, but I won, didn’t I?" he says with a teasing smile. "No, I felt like shit that entire flight home. I mean, I was giddy about seeing your face, but I wasn’t looking forward to you seeing mine. And that look when you got a load of me...You wouldn't even let Padmé near me, you were so scared of me cracking open like an egg. And I still don’t blame you."   
  
He laughs. "The injuries are probably the worst part of my career change, huh? But I'm glad you come to work with me now sometimes. I like having you there."

“I wonder sometimes if you can hear me shouting during the matches.” She blushes bashfully. “I’ve been told that I get _ very  _ into it.”

"I like to think I can. But I'm happy to have you in my corner. Whichever corner that is."

“Do the guys ever give you shit for the braids?”

He beams. "They're jealous, honestly."   
  
Their time together was his favorite pre-fight ritual. Still determined not to cut his hair, Rey shyly revealed her secret talent at hair-braiding and would happily plait it back in complicated and often breathtaking styles to make sure it could not be used against him in a fight. Her fingers combing gently through his hair and the rhythm of her hands twisting and tugging were almost like meditation. His breathing would sync up with it and his mind, riotous and itching for the ring, would ease into that space of silent focus that he needed in the fight. She had that gentle way with him and it was a gift that he can’t imagine being without anymore.   
  
That was maybe his favorite part of the post-fight recaps: seeing how Rey had left her mark on him, win or lose. And no matter what happened, she was ready to soothe his wounds after and maybe give him a few more, if she was feeling feisty that night.

She puffs up a bit with pride. “Damn right they should be. Especially when I’ve got Viking braids up my sleeves for this week. Very fearsome. Dameron won’t know what hit him.”

He chuckles affectionately. "Between your skills and mine, he's in for a shock. I think they all still think I'm just getting lucky or something. They have no idea what I was doing to keep in shape while I was off recovering."

“Lots and  _ lots _ of cardio,” she purrs, scraping her nails lightly up his denim-clothed thigh.

"Hmm, it almost sounds like you miss Kylo Ren when you talk like that," he says, voice hitching.

“Me missing Kylo Ren when I’ve got Ben Solo?” She smiles softly. “Not even a little bit. I got the real thing.”

He squeezes her hand again.    
  
"The one and only."   
  
They ride in silence for a minute.   
  
"Ask me a question," he commands.

She considers, before a wicked grin curls across her lips.    
  
“What turns you on?” she asks.

"Leather and country rock tunes, exclusively."

“I knew it.”

He settles back into the seat while he thinks. He glances over at her.

"Your collarbones."

Her answering look is brief and incredulous.

“Collarbones?” she repeats.

"I mean, I'm a fan of other things. But on you, specifically? I remember that off-the-shoulder thing you wore to our first date, and I couldn't help but notice you have the most beautiful neck and collarbones."

Her cheeks warm. “Well thank you...I didn’t know my collarbones were so alluring.”

"Couldn't take my eyes off of them. But maybe that's because I was too scared to meet your stare. Because then you'd laugh, and when you laugh you crinkle your nose and I knew I would be cursed to be in love with you forever. And I wasn't sure I was ready for that, because I was so sure you hated this date and you were still not sure about the whole ‘going out with a stripper you met that one time’...thing..."

He realizes he's beginning to ramble, but he can't help it. He doesn't care about hiding a thing from her.

A flutter of joy tickles a smile out of her. “Well we both know how that worked out.”

“I’m still amazed it did! Remember how I felt the need to reassure you the suit I was wearing wasn’t a tearaway? Really, you should have used that opportunity to run.”

“In my defense, I thought that was very funny,” she chuckles.

"And now you're stuck with me," he concludes proudly.

“And you get unimpeded access to my sensuous collarbones.”

"Oh, come on, do you want me to say your tits are incredible? Or that I go nuts for a nice pair of gams? Was that the answer you wanted?"

He huffs and mutters under his breath, "I am a gentleman."

“I’m just surprised!” she exclaims. “It’s not a trait that most people find attractive.” She grins. “But leave it to you to always find a way to surprise me.”

“You turn me on in little ways. I don’t know how to describe it. You turn me on by doing things that are just... _ you _ .”

“God, you are utterly saccharine and bloody disgusting and I love you for it.”

“I know, I’m the last true romantic,” he brushes a kiss against her cheek. 

“Whoops, broke the rules.”

“Oh honestly, we only had five more minutes until home.” She shakes her head in mock disapproval. “What am I going to do with you.”

“Did you have any plans? Because I’m yours to do whatever you demand.”

Her brows hitch up and heat pools low in her belly.

“Is that so?” she says softly, her voice low and silky. “Whatever I demand?”

He grins ferally, his teeth flashing in the streetlight.

“Whatever you want, sweetheart. I’ve got time to heal before the bout.”

“Oh-ho, don’t tempt me, Mr. Solo,” she purrs. “Because in four minutes I just might take you up on that offer.”

He taps his finger to his chin.

“What can I do with you in four minutes? Hmm…I suppose I could tell you all the things I want to do to you when we get back…”

She shifts in her seat and those four minutes suddenly stretch before her like eternity.

“Well, I want to kiss you. I won’t have many more chances to do that for a while. So I’ll start with your lips and work my way down. Unless we get really bored in the next few minutes. Then I’ll start between your legs and work my way up.”

“Well that’s a start. What else you got?” she challenges, trying to mask her excitement with what she hopes comes across as sultry disinterest.

“Biting my way down your neck as I peel that blouse off you. Very carefully, of course, because I know how much you like that one. And then get rid of every other stitch on you, though I can’t guarantee I’ll be as gentle with everything else.”

The air leaves her lungs in a controlled exhale as she strains to keep her eyes on the road ahead. Her thighs squeeze together and that barest amount of pressure makes her core throb.

“Three minutes, love,” she breathes.

“I don’t think I can wait that long.” His hand reaches to creep up her thigh.

“Hands. To. Yourself,” she growls, prying his fingers from her lap with surprising strength. “Be good.”

“You know I’m good. I’m always good for you,” he purrs, his voice a sultry, husky whisper. “But I have a big fight this week, and who knows when I’ll be well enough to run my fingers down your thighs. Or between them...”

She casts a brief but smoldering glance his way.

“Well, you know, if you’re bad...maybe I’ll be bad.”

She hears him exhale a low, controlled breath. “Think you can focus on the road for two minutes while I get started?”

“Perhaps you’ll just have to take that risk.”

Gently tugging her hair away, he brushes his warm fingertips against the back of her neck and begins massaging in a circle. 

“I’ll go easy on you.”

She hums low in her throat as he teases apart the tension in the base of her skull. She loves his hands, his fingers, his ability to touch her so gently with such instruments of destruction. It sends an illicit thrill through her to think that the hands that can make others bleed and break are completely devoted to drawing nothing but pleasure out of her body. 

Of course, he wanted to wait several dates before inviting her over, which she appreciated, but deemed utterly unnecessary. She had of course, seen him naked before, but she understood the sentiment. He explained that he wanted her to know that he saw her as a person, a partner, more than a former client; he valued her more than if she had paid him millions to be in her company. And he made sure she felt it.  

Of course, he was a professional, but he was first and foremost a gentleman. He had cooked them a nice dinner (a roast with garlic mashed potatoes) while Rey entertained a very hyperactive kitten, they drank, he made her laugh, she made him smile more fiercely than he had in a while, and as the wine began to cloud their minds, she finally asked him if he had any further intentions for her that evening.

Apprehensively, he invited her to his room. She accepted.

Kissing was familiar by now, but still pleasurable, and while they sat on the edge of the bed, he tried to relax, enjoy her touch, rather than focus on whether or not it was Kylo Ren, Male Escort, or Ben Solo, Awkward Romantic, who would be making the next move.

In the end, it was Rey Bennett. She pinned him to the bed and let him relax into the sensations of her, washing over him in soothing waves. And he found he was no longer concerned how she saw the man she made love to; she saw him, only him.

And that made it all the more enjoyable for both of them.

His thumb brushes against her cheek, and she shudders.

She expertly maneuvers into the parking space behind her shop and hits the parking brake. She at last turns burning eyes onto her passenger. She leans in to kiss him, hard and fast.

“Upstairs,” she growls against his lips. “Now.”

He struggles out of the seatbelt and the cramped passenger seat and flies up the stairs. He unlocks the door and holds it open for her as she reaches the top of the stairs.    
  
They are greeted with a small squeak. Ben flicks on the light. Another squeal.

“Padmé says you didn’t feed her. Padmé, are you telling falsehoods again? Rey, is my daughter lying?”

“She had her dinner before I left for Maz’s earlier,” Rey snickers, getting down on her hands and knees to look for the little black cat’s glowing gold eyes under the couch. “May-May, why are you trying to kill the mood? That’s not very nice of you, baby girl.”

She leans forward slowly until her cheek is pressed to the rug. She knows that this position pushes her ass straight up into the air. She knows that Ben can’t take his eyes off her. 

He shuts and locks the door behind him, and swallows deeply. Damn her.   
  
"Padmé, I want you to remember your daddy and step-mommy love you a lot," he sing-songs, strolling in. "But we've got mommy-daddy stuff to do, okay?"

She twists her head on the floor, peering over her shoulder coquettishly. 

Carefully, he slides his hands around her and, with some small effort, rises with her cradled in his arms. A roguish prince carrying his beloved damsel, he strolls towards the bedroom, dropping her on the comforter without ceremony before kicking off his shoes and socks. 

He buries his face into her neck, gentle, tickling kisses turning to nibbles and licks as she gasps under his touch.

She wriggles beneath him, her nerve endings sizzling under the sweet caresses of his mouth, languid and loving along her jaw. Every scrap of clothing on her body suddenly feels too tight and she tries to push her hips up closer to the hard heat of his body with a quiet whine.

Her legs wrap around his waist and she tugs him back down to her for kiss after blistering kiss. Hands travel down to his chest, sturdy and broad and beating with a heart in love with  _ her _ . She starts working blindly at the buttons of his old flannel until she can finally get the shirt over his frankly ridiculous shoulders and attack his torso through the thin cotton of his undershirt.

He prefers it whenever she undresses him. Given the nature of their meeting, he felt it only proper that, as often as she can when they make love, she touches and undresses him until she is satisfied. If she is having a particularly bleak day and needs a laugh, he will perform a striptease, just to pull her out of whatever bad mood is determined to capture her. But he prefers her hands on him. There's a bit of stability there, of comfort. He doesn't need to overthink or worry that she sees this as a cheap performance; she is in control. He moans at her hands skating along his torso.    
  
She knows she’s doing a shit job of undressing him, but she’s impatient and hungry and there’s something undeniably enticing about the mix of smooth skin and soft fabric under her fingers. She tries to pull his clothes off, but his T-shirt tangles with his button down which gets stuck around his head, and she laughs breathlessly as she finally frees him. His hair is mussed and his eyes are glittering with mirth and she has never seen anything more beautiful. She pulls him back down to kiss him again, this time softer to match her touch along his chest.

His mouth is becoming sloppy against hers as the bliss of her touch starts to overwhelm him. Her hands along his chest are creating small trails of fire in their wake, and he can barely restrain himself.

He is making a lot of money now, sure, and sponsors were hounding him now that he was a Cinderella story, recovering from a horrible injury to become one of the best fighters around. They could afford a bigger place than her small apartment above the shop, but Ben refuses to make Rey give up the luxury of living so close to her business. He glows with pride every time he can mention his girlfriend, the business owner, the best antiques dealer in Clark County, in a conversation with anyone. It was even better when it was during an interview.

Around date four or five, who was counting—he was; it was date four—Ben had informed Rey that he would no longer be taking on escort jobs. Rey had protested a little bit, insisting she was aware that his work duties would never interfere with the “thing” they had (neither wanted to call it a relationship yet, because while they knew it was heading in that direction, both were too afraid of messing it up). However, Ben informed her frankly that he did not want her to risk catching anything from him if they continued to date. His income would suffer a bit, but he wouldn’t mind the sacrifice for her sake.

Rey, however, having a natural entrepreneurial spirit and no desire to deny her boyfriend (she caved) the money he so desperately needed, found an amicable solution for the two of them. Her business scope had been limited to what she could carry and transport on her own or with relatively limited cost. Ben, on the other hand, could easily hoist large furniture pieces, and she would pay him to help her with the shop’s larger acquisitions. Her business expanded thanks to the new merchandise she was able to offer, and Ben was able to make money while still being devoted to Rey.

And he had no desire to end that anytime soon.

She had been the only one there for him, for Ben Solo, when no one else could be bothered to care. He had no desire to disturb her life to make his easier or better; he wanted to be just as supportive of her as she had been of him when he was a sad-eyed stripper, encouraging him to keep training, keep trying. Get back in the Octagon. Keep fighting. 

The air leaves her in an amused little whoosh and her gaze on him is warm, wanting, loving. She kicks her own boots off and wriggles out of the light gray blouse that Ben had wisely decided against ripping off. She would never completely get over how kind he was; after all the shit that he had had to wade through, he was still kind. She snags a belt loop of his jeans around her finger and tugs him back down to her, eager to feel his skin on hers.

He had learned a while ago not to be afraid of crushing her under his bulk; she was sturdy, despite her diminutive size, and he eagerly lowers himself on top of her, hands gliding across the skin of her back, reaching for clasp of her bra, cock straining against his jeans. At Starkiller, it was expected that he remain hard for the show, and he was never one for cockrings, preferring instead to keep himself erect naturally. He had actually enjoyed those last few weeks of work when he had a stash of photos of Rey in various states of undress on his phone to assist with that. 

He gives her a long, hard, hungry kiss, his fingers pressing the clasp of her bra together and releasing it expertly. He draws back.

He mumbles something about being "slow and steady" and slides her bra off over her arms, tossing it over his shoulder.   
  
He large hands rest loosely on either side of her neck and he begins by leaving eager, toothy kisses on either side of her neck, lips and tongue moving soothingly over her skin.

He's becoming impatient as he hears the gasps and moans escaping her. 

She arches up into him, her hips seeking out whatever sensation she can get away with. His hand on her throat is soft, unbearably gentle, but just the slightest hint of pressure that sends electricity singing through her veins. Her own hands tangle in his mane of wild black waves, holding him steadily to her chest.

Grunting at the heavenly sensation of her fingertips brushing against his scalp, he hastily tugs at the button, unfastening her jeans with ease. He wriggles them off of her with a few quick yanks, then looks at her, flushed and bare.   
  
"You little liar," he growls hungrily, tossing her jeans aside and crawling over her. "You told me you didn't want me to get in your knickers. You weren't wearing any."

She looks up at him coyly, stretching enticingly and biting her lip.    
  
"Well what if I  _ had _ mentioned that before, hm?"

His breath catches in his throat, his heart racing. Christ, he hates these tight pants.   
  
"Nothing special. I just would have made you pull over four minutes from home so I could fuck you in a VW Beetle." He licks his lips, red and swollen. "Once I figured out how."

Her answering laugh is low, tinged with burnt sugar sweetness and thick with desire.    
  
"You're a resourceful man," she purrs, tracing a fingertip across his jawbone and tipping his chin up to her. He is powerless to resist her pull. "I'm sure you would've come up with something."   
  
She draws him incrementally closer, until their lips are barely brushing and she can feel his pulse thundering through his skin. Her lashes flutter prettily over her smokey hazel gaze.   
  
"Even if it meant pushing me up against the car and fucking me from behind on the side of the road."

He swallows the lump of anticipation in his throat, then laughs, his lips brushing hers.   
  
"My, my, my. My good girl has become very kinky, hasn't she?"

"I’ve had an excellent teacher."

She leans up to kiss his cheek, just at the spot where she'd kissed him on a surreal Sunday night a little over a year ago.    
  
He smiles, the brush of her lips both enticing and soothing at the same time. He kisses her deeply, freeing himself with a stifled moan against her lips that sends a shockwave of shivers through her. He withdraws from Rey, at last sitting up and pulling his jeans down just a little bit lower on his hips until they are comfortable. He grips her thighs and drags her closer to his cock, prying her legs apart.   
  
He lazily traces a hand across her cunt, sliding two fingers into her. She’s blessedly wet, and he’s painfully hard. She shudders under his touch. He takes himself in his free hand and gently nudges his cock inside her slowly. He sighs in relief at the soft, wet heat of her, the comfort of her body a balm on his nerves.

She moans, loud and lurid, her pleasure echoing off the ceiling. It's not the first time she's felt fortunate that she doesn't share walls with any of her neighbors. The feeling of Ben's cock, thick and heavy inside her, is not something she can take quietly. She meets him thrust for exquisite thrust, her leg caught under his arm to pull him impossibly deeper into her.

He throws his head back in rapture and places a hand on her groin, knowing that pressure in that exact spot drives her crazy. He loves knowing her, physically and spiritually. He learns her turn ons and quirks and uses them liberally to bring her pleasure. He knows the way to nibble on her ear to make her moan. He knows the exact way to kiss her. He knows her. And she knows him.   
  
He rolls his hips faster and harder into her, watching different flavors of joy cross her face in rapid succession.

Her hands scramble to grab the headboard, holding on for dear life as he pounds her into blissful oblivion. She has lost language, reason, and all sense excluding the feelings of him thrusting into her and his hands on her skin. She looks up at him with adoration and ecstasy in her eyes, taking in the tension building in his powerful shoulders, the dark sheen of his hair as it swishes with each thrust, the expression of utter pleasure on his beautiful face. Heat, bright and all-consuming, begins to bubble in her core, only a few more well-placed thrusts away from turning her into a supernova.

Blinded by the rush of her, he isn't sure whether to slow down and savor her or speed up to give her what he hopes will be the first of many orgasms tonight, when his rhythm is interrupted by small tinkling sound and a quiet little cry as Padmé hops up onto the bed next to Rey's head.

Rey tilts her head up to look at the little fur ball and squawks a little laugh as she reaches over to scratch behind the cat's soft ears.   
  
"Padmé, sweet baby girl, I love you..." she chuckles between gasps for air. "But you are the biggest cockblock I have  _ ever _ met. And I've met Armie Hux."

Ben groans, his body pulsing and howling to _move_ , but Padmé merely flops down and purrs at Rey's caresses.   
  
"I don't know what she doesn't get about Mommy-Daddy time..." he grumbles.

"She's a cat, Ben, she cares not for our foolish human ways."

"She's just mad I got her spayed."

Rey continues her scritches. 

"That's right, baby girl, so you can't go around the neighborhood ho-ing it up like Mum is trying to do right now," she coos.

"Hey, I thought we were in a happy committed relationship," Ben says, catching his breath. "I don't think there's anything slutty about what we're doing."

With a wicked gleam in her eye and a firm push on his shoulders, Rey manages to flip him onto his back. And with barely more than a blink of warning and a satisfied groan, she sinks back down onto his cock in one smooth motion.    
  
"Just give me a minute, then," she purrs, her gaze turned deliciously feral.

He vaguely hears the tinkling and thump of Padmé hopping down off the bed and onto the floor, and as Rey looks hungrily at him, all he can manage is "Oh."

She grinds her hips with a slow, deliberate movement, her gaze never breaking from his.

At her intense gaze, he can only smile lazily, overjoyed at how she spoiled him with her body, her strength almost a rival to his when he let his guard down. He arches his back to meet her mid-thrust, enjoying the new rush of pleasure this angle brings.

Groping slowly down towards the point where their bodies meet, he presses his thumb on her clit, and she moans, high and keening, rolling her hips into his touch. He tries, as he often does, to remember the first time he saw her, over a year ago. Birthday girl, timid and unusual for his general demographic. He had done his bad boy routine, and rather than making his exit, as he desperately wanted to, he had been obligated to call for the birthday girl and pull her up on stage while another guy brought her a chair. He did a special dance, just for her, short and titillating, that involved very little dancing and a lot of the old bump and grind. He doesn't remember it very clearly; he did so many of those. This night, he just wanted to go home. He wanted nothing more than to get back to training. He was getting stronger again, strong enough to get back into fighting.

But here he was, wasting his strength and energy trying and failing to tantalize a girl who looked like she'd rather be anywhere else.

He'd brought out the big guns and knelt between her legs, opening them to the cheers of the crowds, and he'd buried his nose in the seam of her jeans and, Christ, this was boring. But he'd looked up, and she was staring down at him, and at once any hint of mirth vanished. 

That, he remembered.

For a instant, she also wore the look of wishing to be anywhere else, before he removed her from the stage, returning her to her giggly friends. 

Now he looks up at the same woman, naked and proud and alive, and there's that bliss-drunk smile on her lips and in her eyes. And he wouldn't be anywhere else.

She rides him wildly, chasing down that elusive pleasure that he is always so determined to give her. She can’t imagine what life was like before him anymore. It had only been a year and change since they got together, but she often feels as though she had always known this man in some quiet, deep down kind of way. As if they were always going to find each other in the red lights of the Starkiller. He’d asked her many times before, in the dark hours of the night when they were curled together in bed, what made her come back to the club on that fateful night.

_ Your soul called to my own and promised that we’d never have to be alone again. It’s been singing to me since Covent Garden, since the junkyard, since the plane ride over the sea, since that night under the stars when you touched my hand and my heart in one go. You were waiting for me and I was waiting for you. _

She laces their fingers together and looks back down at him with a softness in her eyes.  _ I found you. _

He slows down to focus on her, on prolonging this moment, and pulls her to his mouth, kissing her desperately, as if she might vanish from over him.

Last Meal, they call it playfully. Jokes to obscure their very real fears of what may become of him after the fight. Their bodies seem more sensitive, as if their skin and nerves and muscles know his fight is on the horizon. It’s his biggest yet, and her touch, both soothing and empowering, is fortifying him for the pain to come, tattooing her fingerprints onto his body for when touching her becomes impossible, his hands swollen and sore. For when he can’t bear the pain of her caresses across his bruised and broken skin.

Though it seems impossible he could work any more, he’ll be training most of the coming week, and all the while he’ll be thinking of her. He knows he wouldn’t be anywhere near where he is without her. And he tries to tell her that with his touch every time they make love. He doesn’t think words will suffice.

He massages her clit again, and she breaks away from his kiss with a gasp.

“I love you,” he pants. She sees it again: this is a smile he has only for her.

Her heart stutters and when she smiles back at him he looks at her like she’s a precious, rare thing. He refuses to hear any whisper of her believing that she is anything less and burns away her insecurities with kisses and tender words every time. For all that he reminds her of what she has done for him, she makes sure he knows how much he has changed her life.

“I love you too, Ben. God, I love you.”

He sits up so he can reach her, curling his arm around her hips and carving his adoration into her flesh with his lips and tongue.

She wraps her arms around his shoulders as they continue to move together, their pace rising to a fever pitch that she knows can’t last much longer. If the cold fire racing through her veins is any indication. 

“I’m close, love,  _ please please  _ don’t stop,” she whispers desperately, her mouth brushing against his.

He can feel her plea on his lips, and he moves deliriously faster, his fingers still pressing against her clit. He’s close, too, but her needs come first. His other hand snakes up her neck and weaves into her hair, tugging gently but with a determination. 

“Me...too,” he hisses. He loves how deeply he can feel her, but he can also feel himself careening towards the edge and he can’t stop, as much as he wants to prolong this moment.

“Ben, please, love, come with me,” she cries, clutching onto the headboard behind him until her knuckles go white and her arms shake with the effort.

Her desperation for him sets him loose, and he growls, “Rey, baby, I’ve got you,” as he feels that last pull, and the shuddering bliss begins.   
  
(He only calls her baby when he’s too far gone in her to be self-conscious about it.)

As if this beautiful man inside her is wringing out the last drops of pleasure from her body, her spine bows and she groans gutturally.

He pants as he finishes spending himself, and then laughs, pushing his hair back out of his face so he can look at her better. She’s flushed and her hair is clinging to her and really, he doesn’t care if it’s the chemicals flooding his brain in the wake of orgasm: he doesn’t think he deserves to be loved by anyone quite as exquisite as her. She was nothing like what he had expected but everything he needed, and he couldn’t help but stare at her in his arms those extra few seconds before he fell asleep every night, grateful that she had been willing to take that chance on him.

She laughs breathlessly with him. “Fuck,” she wheezes. “That was...”

He kisses her collarbone lazily.

“Mhmmm…” he hums, encouraging her to continue.

“...incredible,” she finishes with a sigh, her eyes drifting closed. “Fucking incredible.”

He can't help but feel a spark of pride, and he grins. He kisses her one more time before he turns his body to lay beside her, curling around her protectively.

"Good, you deserve nothing less.”

She smiles at him softly. “Likewise, my love.”   
  
She edges up onto her elbows, actually gets a good look at him in his debauched state and smiles, leaning over to pepper soft little kisses across his face.    
  
"I love you, Ben Solo," she murmurs sweetly as she brushes her lips against his bisected brow. "With all my heart."

“And you have all of mine.” 

He knows her. He knows her better than anyone else in the world. And yet, the bashful smile he shoots her still knocks the air out of her.   
  
She uses her free hand to push his tousled hair back from his forehead, delighting in the softness of each strand and the open serenity in his face. He seems so much younger, calmer,  _ happier _ when she touches him, as if she has the power soothe away a lifetime of his hurts with her hands. 

"Now let's get ready for bed. You have a long day of smoldering into the cameras tomorrow."

He groans, but she tugs his arm and pulls him out of the bed and towards the bathroom.

“Yeah I guess I should brush my teeth so they’re nice and pretty when they get knocked out of my skull.” He smirks. “Plus you’re covered in my cooties so you should wash up.”

He loops an arm around her waist to reach for his toothbrush. She gives him a little hip check and grins up at him.

“And what if I like your cooties?”   
  
They go about their routines in comfortable quiet for a few moments, just soaking in the ease between them. When he finishes brushing and she finishes washing, she makes sure to smear a bit of moisturizer on his face after her own. She’ll never admit it, but she’ll use any excuse to get the feel of his face under her fingertips; the sharp cheekbones, the slightly crooked nose, the scar.    
  
“Breathing easy today?” she asks quietly, another small part of their new normal.

He takes her hand from his cheek and presses it to the scar over his ribs, inhaling deeply. His chest puffs out and he slows his breath; she can feel the slight flutter of his lung as he exhales.   
  
The last scare had both of them on edge.

She exhales a gust of relieved wind herself, leaning forward to press her forehead against his sternum.    
  
"Sorry, you know I worry," she mumbles.

“You always have," he says with a smile as the air leaves him. He presses her to him.   
  
It was just a training bout, one of Ben's first since the doctors had cleared him, and Rey had come by, curious to see her new boyfriend in action. However, a fist to the diaphragm had made the occasion far more serious than either of them could have anticipated. 

That was a long night in the hospital.

He had just had the wind knocked out of him, nothing serious, but Rey and his very contrite opponent had dragged him out to Rey's Beetle to rush him to the ER to make sure it wasn't a recurrence of his pneumothorax.   
  
Ben was glad he had someone with him this time around.   
  
"I think we're past the worst."

“And you're getting stronger every day," she reminds herself, coiling her arms around his waist. She yawns softly, nestling closer to his chest. "Ready?"   
  
He flicks off the lights, and carries the two of them to the bedroom. She climbs into bed first, and he just stares at her in the dim light of the streetlamp pouring into the room through the window.   
  
"With you there, it's honestly a wonder I ever get out of bed," he mutters, his voice low and a little rough.

She curls up under the covers, humming happily.    
  
"You only get out of bed because I get out of bed."

“Then stop doing that."   
  
He throws the blankets back, far less delicately than Rey had, resulting in a squeal of dismay from his girlfriend.   
  
In a moment, he had settled in and pulled her small, folded form to him, his arms branding her around her waist. She seems to blossom sleepily in the heat of him and stretches her body to press her back against his chest.   
  
He knows this will likely be their last night to really spend together before the fight. His schedule for the long week ahead is playing in his mind. Training. Press. Interviews. Promos. Weigh-ins. His only blessing was that this time, the fight was local. Rey was close. He didn’t have much free time, but he would spend all of it with her.   
  
He grips her tighter and breathes deeply.

That would come in time. For now, they have this.

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> According to my sources, it is illegal to raw your girlfriend along the side of the road, even in Nevada, but I also encouraged you to pay strippers in feed corn so maybe don't seek legal counsel on Archive of Our Own.


	6. Chapter 6

At the Palacio, he is the hometown hero.

It had been a goddamn long time since he had been seen as a hero of any sort. Since returning to fighting, he’d been a  _ inspiration _ . A Cinderella story. “A relentless spirit, defying the odds.” (That’s what Finn said he’d heard on one of the podcasts, anyway; his trainer is an absolute geek for his job, and Ben loves that about him.)

He was the bad boy before; now he's a wraith, a vengeful spirit back from the dead. A monster, but with an indomitable spirit that has a certain charm. He was a dark horse before, a bastard. Now he is fighting for the title on the Vegas strip as a goddamn  _ hero. _ He’d never have believed it a year ago. But when the doctor gave him the okay, the bad boy/stabbing survivor got a second chance, and he fought harder and harder every day to show he deserved it.

He can feel the pulsing energy from outside, down the end of that long hallway. His headphones aren’t strong enough to keep out the thrum of the tens of thousands bodies crammed into the arena above and around him. 

Rey’s playlist is all that matters right now. She had lovingly chosen each song for pump him up, to invigorate him for the fight. To try to keep his frazzled mind at ease. It could be K-Pop for all he was paying attention. He presses the pads against his ears.

_ Focus. _

He's not nervous. He is long past stage fright or performance anxiety; it had been months since he had last put on a leather thong for gawking tourists, and having his body kicked and punched and bent to the point of breaking was somehow still a more enticing prospect. However, he knows what is at stake. He can't psych himself out, let himself get lost scaling the mountain in the distance. 

His mind keeps jumping from things he shouldn’t think about (the fight, Rey, how many people were out there, the voicemail of his mother wishing him good luck), to remembering that he is not supposed to think of these things, to sitting for a few moments trying to just space out and not think about ANYTHING, before his mind would wrap back around to one of the Unwelcome Thoughts...

_ Happy place _ .

Dameron always started too aggressive, but would tire out easily, then recover, putting on a mean defense. Nothing he couldn’t handle. He just had to stop him early. Keep his head guarded. 

It was something he and Rey had discussed. He’d keep at it for a few more years, minding his head with every swing that came towards him. Maybe try for a few more titles. Go out on top. Maybe go into antiques with her, maybe go into commentating. He kind of wants to be a medic, give back to the people who saved his life, but he’d have to study up on that first. 

He’s saving money now. He can step out of the cage sooner rather than later. He doesn’t want to get to the point he has to drug himself up just to get ready to fight. That’s not who he wants to be.

_ Happy place _ ,  _ Ben _ !

He swears his thoughts are even starting to get a cute British accent.

_ Happy place. Right. _

Bed. Rey in his arms. She’s snoring (she denies she snores, but it’s so gentle he can’t help but smile when he hears it). Sunlight poking through the one blind Padmé had broken. Padmé, curled up against his back. The A/C humming in the window.

He almost doesn’t see the production and security team enter the room until they are right in front of him. He peels the headphones off his ears. He hears it now, in full force; a wave of shouts and whistles and shrieks. Poe Dameron is in the building..

“Ready?” Finn asks.   
  
Ben sees the camera crew waiting down the hallway. He replaces his hood over his head and zips his sweatshirt all the way up.

_ Happy place. _

“Let’s do this.”

He rolls his shoulders and cracks his knuckles one last time, the pop of his joints lost in his gloved hands. In the distance he can hear music playing. Poe’s entrance.

Exhaling, he schools his face into a mask of disinterest, of power, and begins to walk out.

 

Anticipation, a familiar animal, curls in her stomach. The Cage is nearly empty save for a few staffers and refs. She thinks she's gone deaf at this point, the shrieking crowd and the commentators filtering out into white noise as her eyes dart around the stadium. She had purposefully put herself on the floor by the aisle, so she can watch him walk out of the west gate.   
  
She doesn't stand to cheer with the rest of the spectators when Dameron comes strutting out to some Kanye song. His smile on the Jumbotron is like looking into the sun, and she grimaces. He seems to float down his lane with a Guatemalan flag draped over him like a cape and his adoring fans reaching over his security team just to get a touch of this god among men. The golden boy. The easy bet. What's left of her beer has already gone warm in her cup holder, the crush of bodies in high temper heating the air and scenting it with bloodlust. She doesn't move.   
  
She sits stiffly and waits in the staticky silence.   
  
The lights drop. A lonely steel guitar strums up a beat as disembodied voices echo through the stadium.   
  
"This man...completely unstoppable...SOLO HAS WON THE LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP TITLE!...walked out of the grave with his fists up...what a comeback...comeback...comeback..."   
  
And then the beat drops.   
  
And out of the darkness stalks Ben Solo, wrapped in shadows and moving with the lethal ease of an apex predator.    
  
Rey's breath catches, her heart stops, and she flies to her feet, screaming with the not inconsiderable mass of Solo fans. Unlike with Dameron, his fans don't try to reach out to him, as if they're terrified to touch him as he is now. Despite their healthy respect (fear) of him, they still push and shove to try to get a better glimpse of the grim reaper, and Rey stands firm against them.

She would never be completely comfortable alone in a large crowd like this. Tucked deep inside of herself would always be a scared little five year old waiting alone in Covent Garden. Her parents never came back for her. Ben would. Ben would always come back to her. For her.

 

He storms through the crowd like he's walking through a hurricane. He can feel the energy around him in the stadium, the rush of adrenaline and passion, and it carries him as he goes on the long trek to the Cage. He's glad for the security escorting him, otherwise he fears he might keep walking and just go strutting off in the wrong direction. It would certainly kill the vibe.   
  
He'd never been one for the funny entrances, nor the particularly creative walk-ins. Rey had suggested he bust out some of the old choreo, but they both laughed too hard at the idea for him to inquire as to how serious she was.    
  
But he had crafted this persona. The wraith with the iron kicks. The grim reaper himself. The black-hearted comeback kid who begrudgingly earns the respect of opponents who mistakenly doubt him.   
  
Above his head on the jumbotron is a close-up of his eyes, larger than life and haunting. His actual eyes are still locked on the path ahead, the barricade trail leading to the Cage. The eager hands did not paw at him as they do the other fighters. He is a ghost, they say. He is immaterial, untouchable, maybe even cursed. In the periphery of his vision, he can see his own gaze glaring down on everyone in the arena. 

He looks both threatening and in the same light, bored by all this pageantry. He wants to be in the Cage already. He wants to do what he came here for.   
  
The beast within him is calling for blood. He can only hold off for so long. He can only manage that hunger before it must be satiated.

 

She can't deny the surge of heat that barrels through her as she turns to watch him walk in. He looks dangerous, menacing, darkly handsome. She smiles to herself; he looks like the best kind of trouble. And she intends to make some trouble with him later. Much later. When he can touch and be touched without pain. Once the last of the brutality has gone down with his swollen knuckles.   
  
The stadium is massive so the aisle is long, but he's moving at a fair clip in his intense desire to get to the ring. He's approaching fast. Her heart rate picks up from the excitement, the energy, the echo chamber of madness around her. She can just see the outline of that pale, beloved face under the hood's shadow.

She wishes so badly that she could be walking with him. He had mentioned once that he kind of hates the walk in; it’s a tedious trek to get where he’s trying to go. He hates the artifice of it all. She wants to be there for that, not for the recognition or the cameras on her, but for the feel of his hand, taped solid and burning for the fight, in her own, cool and small and merely flesh. So it’s not so long and lonely a walk.

She can see him, but she wonders if he can see her. He’s so close now, only a few dwindling feet away from her aisle seat and she thinks that she must be vibrating from the force of her heart pounding in her chest. 

And then he’s only an arm’s length away and time slows and Rey’s hand shoots out of its own accord to reach for him. Her fingertips just barely graze his lower back, snagging on the soft fabric of his black sweatshirt before he’s beyond her.

He almost pauses when he feels a tug on him, but it’s not commanding, it’s not desperate or controlling. The fingers on him are beseeching, familiar. 

He shoots a glance over his shoulder, but the hood blocks his view. 

He knows. And that’s when he halts his long strides to throw back the hood and reveal his hair for the night. It had been lovingly crafted in his hotel room several hours earlier, Rey fussing affectionately over him as he sat facing the window, the strip unfolding before him in the late afternoon sunlight. The braids along his scalp, viking braids, as Rey had promised, had ended in two short ponytails, one on top of the other.    
  
While he waited for his fight, he had pulled the ponytails into small, looping buns, an homage to Rey’s favorite hairstyle.

The crowd goes wild at the sight, as they are wont to do. There were some ways his prior career had helped him be better at this current one, and his flair for the dramatic, approaching kayfabe, was certainly one of his more refined skills. The spotlights find him, and he bathes in the glow as he casts a glance over his shoulder.   
  
There’s a small island of peace in the roaring ocean of faces. Rey. She is leaning over the barricade, illuminated and glowing like an angel, watching him intently. He throws her a wink over his shoulder, so quick it is easy to miss as he resumes his charge toward the Cage, this time faster, more powerful.

He’d be fighting for her. Always for her.

Warmth blooms in her chest and her answering grin is enough to light the stadium. The camera had focused in on the silent exchange for a few shots, a moment that, after the fight, the two of them would rewatch on his laptop in one of recap videos of the fight. He would save the file when she went back off to work in a few days and screenshot the look of pure love and joy on his girl’s face to look at again and again on the days when he took more of a beating than usual.    
  
She can’t stop smiling as he climbs the stairs up to the Cage, Finn waiting for him at the top. The two men bump fists and Finn seems to comment on Ben’s momentary pause.    
  
Ben turns back one more time, peering through the chainlink to glimpse her. She’s still standing there, still watching him, still smiling bright as the Nevada sun. The world around them seems to flash to a different room, different lights, a different stage.    
  
Her face remains the only constant. His eyes hook into her as they always have. 

She watches him shrug out of the hoodie, bared muscles relaxed and loose and ready to strike, and she takes a deep breath in tandem with his own. She mouths a silent “I love you” to him and he grins crookedly before turning back to Finn to reply.    
  
She can tell from his expression the moment the noise in his brain goes silent, as if a switch has been flicked.    
  
He’s in his element, comfortable in his skin, quiet and focused. She didn’t think it was possible to love him any more than she already did, but she finds her heart skipping an extra beat to see him achieve his goals.    
  
Later, as Ben’s fist is being hoisted in the air by the referee at the end of two and a half grueling rounds, he searches the crowd with wild eyes, the split in his eyebrow leaking blood and obscuring his vision. He catches sight of her, her cheeks flushed with excitement and her face is relieved and proud and beautiful. And he spits out his mouthguard and smiles for her, wide and bloody and shining like Christmas morning. Once the bruise on his cheekbone has dulled to a low throb thanks to an icepack shoved against his face, after the ringing in his ears has subsided at last in the quiet of their hotel room, after his braids have been lovingly combed out, Rey pulls him into her arms and holds him gently.    
  
She does her best to soothe away his many hurts with tender caresses and featherlight kisses on any unbruised skin she can find, overwriting muscle memories of vicious hands with gentle touch and so much love it’s almost overwhelming, and she’s afraid his legs might give out beneath him. She undresses them both and holds up his giant, exhausted frame in the shower, washing away blood and sweat and the lingering tang of righteous fury with a soft washcloth and hot water, his sore arms draped loosely around her waist and his head resting on her shoulder. She sits him on the edge of the king-sized bed and stands between his legs to dab neosporin on his cuts. He downs a bottle of water and painkillers and instant mac and cheese, the only thing he can currently stomach. Then she curls around him in bed, bare skin to bare skin, his battered body to her whole one, letting his head rest over her heart as he falls asleep. Before she follows him into slumber, she sends up a silent and profound thank-you to whichever deity watches over fighters and strippers for bringing him back to her, no matter what condition he’s in; it will always be a coin toss. 

They barely say a word the entire time, but it doesn’t matter, it isn’t necessary. She knows what he needs without him even having to ask.    
  
It’s instinct.    
  
It’s a thousand little certainties and micro-realities. The sun will rise in the morning, cutting golden ribbons out of the neon streets of Las Vegas. The day will bring a late room service breakfast and check-ins with the staff doctors. Rey will help fold her beat up boyfriend into her beat up car, a recovery kit and pain meds weighing down her purse. Padmé will be waiting on the couch when they get home. They will fall asleep watching  _ The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina  _ on Ben’s laptop, his head cradled in her lap as she strokes his hair, the only part of him that doesn’t hurt. 

She will close the shop early the next day and pad quietly upstairs, listening for the tinkle of Padmé’s bell, and be met with sunset-warmed silence. Her boyfriend will be curled up on their bed, a little lump of sleepy gray fur notched in the crook of his healing body. Rey will slip into bed behind him and fall asleep easier than she’s slept in days. At some point, when it is dark and cool in the apartment, she will sneak out into the kitchen and order pizza. Ben will limp out into the living room not long after, missing her warmth, and wrap his arms gingerly around her. They will stand in the half-dark, content to just  _ be  _ with each other, nurturing that quiet connection that is so rare and fragile and wholly theirs. The world around them, real and brutal and fantastic, will continue to turn.

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The patron saint of fighters and strippers is Kenny Florian, by the way.
> 
> I mean...have you seen Battlebots?
> 
>  
> 
> And that wraps up another track of The Desired Effect. Thanks for sticking around for this weird little experiment, and we hope you'll come back again for the next song!


End file.
